Streaming Star Dedicates Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Branch

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have run out of creative self-imposed challenges that impose unique restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, while many players have attempted to finish the game using just a stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the individual who aimed to clear the game with a single branch—specifically, the very same stick throughout.

The streamer is renowned for such difficult playthroughs, like the instance he played the title using only explosives or the attempt where he tried to beat the story with zero energy. A one-branch run, though, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires Link to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly important when dealing with the weakest weapon in the whole world. But if the stick breaks, that's the end. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The full story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So the creator does a “setup” file where he advances normally, and the actual file, where he's restricted. The preparatory save has him going through the intro and initial tutorial island, and this Link gains full stamina and health. From this point, he starts a cinematic and halts partway through to instruct the game to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets mixed up and creates a third game file that merges the states of the original two.

This creates fresh issues, however. The merged save file has a Link that did not acquired the ability to access shrines. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit addresses readily, but pulling it off means relying on an unstable build of the title that fails to load some locations. As with everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He starts the game on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the game partway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Additional Hurdles

Interestingly, the introductory version of Link is coded so that he is unable to break any tools he wields, presumably to avoid a scenario where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the wear issue, as the character he transfers across dimensions is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eradicates all potential difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective item that renders encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's all a question of grit and dedication. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant number of consumables to boost his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He also makes use of a glitch that enables him to clip through the world. Some would find these means reason to question the legitimacy of the run, but in my mind, he's a inventive player who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He also uses a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll ban a fan from his live stream, creating an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

The streamer manages to defeat several of the game's main enemies, but the battles look painful. The video version of his quest spares the viewer sit through the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them last several hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an incredible 23 hours. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes the hero's health as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is after all only a piece of wood. He can't necessarily duplicate objects during the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he does overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the software forces the player to wield the Master Sword as the last attack, so technically, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

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