Streaming Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Attempting to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Branch

One could think that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of creative challenge runs that apply special restrictions on a gameplay session. However, although numerous gamers have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom with just a wooden stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the player who aimed to beat the game with a one branch—specifically, the exact same stick throughout.

The streamer is renowned for such difficult playthroughs, like the time he went through the title solely with explosives or the attempt where he tried to defeat the game with zero stamina. A single stick playthrough, though, seems impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is especially relevant when dealing with the weakest weapon in the whole world. But if the stick breaks, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The simple answer is glitches. The complete story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's save file system to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator creates a “setup” file where he progresses standardly, and the actual save, where he's limited. The setup save has him going through the prologue and initial tutorial island, and this character acquires maximum stamina and hearts. From this point, he starts a cinematic and pauses midway through to tell the game to open an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and creates a new game file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

This causes new problems, however. The fused save file has a protagonist that did not obtain the capability to access shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes easily, but executing it means relying on an unstable build of the title that fails to load certain locations. As with everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then updates the game partway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the introductory form of the hero is programmed so that he cannot damage any tools he wields, likely to prevent a situation where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the durability issue, as the Link he pulls across dimensions is the one from the start of the game. It's a smart technique, but not a method that eradicates all possible friction. The stick is nonetheless a weak item that makes encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of determination and dedication. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful supply of consumables to improve his strength, or stock up on healing spirits. He additionally employs a bug that enables him to clip through the environment. A few would find these methods grounds 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 viewer. He also uses a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll remove a fan from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

The streamer succeeds to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles appear grueling. The YouTube version of his journey spares the audience sit through the whole fights, which is a good thing when some of them take several long hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf battle, which erases the hero's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is after all just a piece of wood. He can't necessarily duplicate objects during the battle.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the game forces the user to wield the legendary weapon as the last attack, so technically, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow banned more than a thousand people in his Twitch chat. RIP.