Twitch Star Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Branch

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative challenge runs that impose unique restrictions on a gameplay session. However, although numerous gamers have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom with only a stick, content creator PointCrow stands out as the individual who aimed to clear the game with a single stick—specifically, the very same stick throughout.

PointCrow is famous for such difficult playthroughs, such as the instance he went through the title solely with bombs or the effort where he aimed to beat the story with no stamina. A one-branch playthrough, though, seems unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the most fragile tool in the entire world. Yet if the branch shatters, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The complete answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” save where he progresses normally, and the real save, where he's limited. The setup file has him completing the prologue and initial tutorial island, and this Link gains maximum endurance and hearts. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and halts partway through to tell the software to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and creates a new save file that merges the states of the first two files.

This causes new issues, however. The merged file has a Link that did not obtain the ability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes easily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy build of the game that fails to load some locations. As with other obstacles, he has a technical solution for it: He starts the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then updates the game partway through to ensure it starts working properly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue version of Link is coded so that he cannot break any tools he wields, likely to avoid a scenario where the player gets trapped at the start of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the durability problem, as the Link he pulls across universes is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a smart trick, but not one that eliminates all possible friction. The branch is nonetheless a weak item that renders encounters tedious. But at that point, it's all a matter of determination and perseverance. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant supply of consumables to boost his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a bug that enables him to phase through the environment. Some would consider these methods reason to question the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a inventive player who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He also uses a penalty of kinds stating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll ban a fan from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to get through many of the game's main enemies, but the battles look grueling. The video edit of his journey doesn't make the audience sit through the whole fights, which is a good thing when a few of them take several long hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing 23 hours. The Ganondorf battle, which erases the hero's health as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is still just a piece of wood. He can't always clone objects during the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow does overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the software forces the player to use the Master Sword as the last strike, so technically, it's not quite fully a stick-only run. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow removed more than 1,000 users in his live stream. RIP.