Streaming Star Dedicates Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Branch

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that apply unique rules on a gameplay session. Yet, while numerous gamers have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom using only a stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the player who aimed to clear the adventure with a one stick—meaning, the exact same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the time he went through the game solely with bombs or the effort where he aimed to defeat the story with zero energy. A single stick run, however, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces the hero to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the whole weapon wear system, which is especially important when working with the weakest weapon in the whole world. Yet if the stick breaks, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The complete story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” save where he advances normally, and the actual file, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him going through the intro and first tutorial island, and this character gains full stamina and hearts. From here, he triggers a cutscene and halts partway through to instruct the software to open an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets confused and creates a new save file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

This causes new problems, though. The merged save file has a protagonist that never obtain the ability to enter shrines. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit fixes readily, but pulling it off means depending on an unstable build of the title that fails to open certain locations. Like other obstacles, he has a clever solution for it: He begins the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the game partway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue version of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to damage any weapons he uses, likely to prevent a scenario where the player gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the wear problem, as the character he pulls between dimensions is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eliminates all potential friction. The branch is nonetheless a weak item that makes battles tedious. But at that stage, it's all a question of determination and dedication. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant number of consumables to boost his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He also employs a glitch that allows him to phase through the world. A few would find these methods grounds to discredit the legitimacy of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful player who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He also implements a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll remove one fan from his live stream, establishing an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to defeat several of the game's bosses, but the fights look painful. The video version of his journey spares the viewer endure the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when a few of them last several hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing 23 hours. The final villain showdown, which depletes the hero's health as it unfolds, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is still just a piece of wood. He is unable to always clone objects during the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow manages to overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the game forces the user to wield the Master Sword as the last attack, so technically, it's not fully a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed more than a thousand users in his live stream. RIP.