Twitch Personality Spends 37 Straight Attempting to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Branch

One could think that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that impose unique rules on a playthrough. Yet, while numerous players have tried to complete the game with only a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the player who aimed to beat the game with a one stick—specifically, the exact same stick throughout.

The streamer is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the instance he went through the title using only bombs or the effort where he tried to defeat the story with no energy. A one-branch run, however, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is especially important when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the whole world. But if the stick shatters, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is glitches. The full answer, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can manipulate the game's save file system to have distinct game sessions that affect one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” save where he progresses standardly, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The setup file has him completing the intro and initial starting area, and this Link acquires full endurance and health. From here, he starts a cutscene and halts partway through to instruct the software to open an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets confused and creates a new save file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

This causes new issues, though. The merged file has a Link that never acquired the ability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses readily, but executing it means depending on an unstable version of the game that fails to open some locations. Like everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts the game on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the game partway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the prologue version of the hero is coded so that he cannot damage any weapons he uses, likely to avoid a scenario where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the durability issue, as the character he pulls between dimensions is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eradicates all potential friction. The branch is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that makes battles onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a question of determination and perseverance. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an plentiful number of items to boost his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a bug that allows Link to clip through the world. Some would consider these methods reason to discredit the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He also implements a safeguard of kinds stating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll remove a fan from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

PointCrow manages to defeat many of the game's bosses, but the battles appear painful. The video version of his quest spares the audience sit through the entire conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them last several hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf battle, which erases Link's health as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable branch is after all only a stick. He can't necessarily clone items midway the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the software compels the user to use the legendary weapon as the last strike, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow banned over 1,000 users in his live stream. Rest in peace.