Streaming Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Branch

You might assume 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 special rules on a gameplay session. Yet, although many gamers have tried to finish the game using only a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the player who aimed to beat the adventure with a single branch—meaning, the very same one throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the instance he played the title solely with bombs or the effort where he aimed to beat the story with no stamina. A one-branch playthrough, however, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole weapon wear system, which is especially relevant when dealing with the weakest tool in the entire game. Yet if the branch breaks, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple answer is exploits. The full story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow does a “setup” file where he advances normally, and the actual file, where he's restricted. The preparatory save has him completing the intro and first starting area, and this Link acquires full endurance and hearts. From here, he starts a cutscene and pauses midway through to instruct the software to load an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and creates a new game file that merges the conditions of the original two.

That causes new problems, though. The merged file has a Link that did not acquired the ability to enter shrines. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit addresses easily, but executing it means relying on an buggy build of the title that refuses to open some locations. As with everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He starts the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the game partway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory form of the hero is coded so that he is unable to damage any tools he wields, likely to avoid a situation where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the durability issue, as the character he pulls between dimensions is the one from the start of the game. It's a smart technique, but not a method that eliminates all possible friction. The branch is still a weak weapon that renders battles tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of grit and dedication. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant supply of consumables to boost his attack, or accumulate on healing spirits. He additionally employs a bug that enables him to clip through the world. A few would consider these methods grounds to discredit the validity of the run, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He further implements a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll remove a fan from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

PointCrow manages to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles look painful. The YouTube version of his journey doesn't make the viewer endure the whole fights, which is a blessing when a few of them last several long hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing twenty-three hours. The final villain showdown, which erases Link's health as it unfolds, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is after all just a stick. He can't always clone objects midway the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he manages to defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the software forces the user to use the Master Sword as the final strike, so technically, it's not fully a stick-only run. But what fun is that?

In the end, the streamer banned more than 1,000 people in his live stream. RIP.