Twitch Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Branch

One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have run out of novel challenge runs that impose unique rules on a playthrough. However, although many gamers have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom with only a stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the player who aimed to clear the game with a one stick—meaning, the exact same stick from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for such difficult playthroughs, like the time he went through the game solely with bombs or the effort where he aimed to beat the game with zero stamina. A one-branch run, however, seems impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole weapon wear system, which is especially important when dealing with the most fragile tool in the whole world. But if the stick breaks, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The full story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that impact one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” save where he progresses normally, and the real save, where he's limited. The setup save has him completing the intro and first starting area, and this Link gains maximum endurance and hearts. From here, he triggers a cutscene and pauses partway through to instruct the game to load an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and creates a new game file that merges the conditions of the original two.

That creates new issues, however. The merged file has a protagonist that never acquired the capability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses easily, but pulling it off means depending on an unstable build of the title that fails to open some locations. Like everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then updates the game midway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue version of Link is coded so that he is unable to break any weapons he uses, presumably to prevent a situation where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the wear issue, as the Link he transfers between dimensions is the version from the beginning of the game. It's a clever technique, but not one that eradicates all possible difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a weak item that renders encounters onerous. But at that point, it's all a matter of grit and dedication. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an plentiful supply of items to improve his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He also employs a glitch that allows Link to phase through the environment. Some would consider these means grounds to question the validity of the run, but in my mind, he's a resourceful player who is ready to do whatever it takes to engage his audience. He further uses a safeguard of kinds stipulating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll ban one viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

The streamer manages to defeat several of the game's main enemies, but the battles appear grueling. The YouTube version of his journey spares the viewer sit through the entire conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them take multiple hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing twenty-three straight. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases the hero's hearts as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is still only a piece of wood. He can't necessarily clone objects during the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he manages to overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the software forces the player to use the Master Sword as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow removed over a thousand people in his Twitch chat. RIP.