Twitch Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Branch

One could think that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted creative challenge runs that apply unique rules on a playthrough. Yet, although numerous gamers have tried to finish the game using just a wooden stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the player who endeavored to clear the game with a one branch—meaning, the exact same one throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the time he played the game using only explosives or the attempt where he tried to defeat the game with zero stamina. A one-branch run, though, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole durability system, which is especially relevant when dealing with the weakest weapon in the whole world. But if the branch breaks, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple answer is glitches. The full story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's save file system to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” save where he progresses normally, and the real save, where he's limited. The setup file has him completing the prologue and initial starting area, and this character gains maximum stamina and health. From this point, he starts a cinematic and halts midway through to instruct the software to open an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets confused and generates a third game file that merges the states of the first two files.

This creates fresh issues, though. The merged save file has a Link that never obtain the ability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes easily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy build of the title that refuses to open some areas. As with everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the software partway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue version of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to damage any tools he wields, presumably to prevent a scenario where the player gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the durability issue, as the character he pulls across universes is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a clever technique, but not one that eliminates all possible friction. The stick is still a weak item that renders battles onerous. But at that stage, it's all a question of determination and perseverance. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant supply of items to boost his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also makes use of a bug that enables him to clip through the world. Some would find these means reason to discredit the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive player who is ready to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He also uses a safeguard of kinds stating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll ban one fan from his live stream, creating an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to defeat several of the game's main enemies, but the fights look painful. The YouTube version of his journey doesn't make the audience sit through the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them last multiple hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing 23 straight. The final villain battle, which depletes the hero's health as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is still only a stick. He is unable to necessarily duplicate items during the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to overcome the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software forces the player to use the legendary weapon as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed more than 1,000 people in his live stream. RIP.