Twitch Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Branch

You might assume that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of creative self-imposed challenges that impose unique rules on a playthrough. However, while many players have tried to complete the game using only a stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the individual who aimed to clear the game with a one stick—meaning, the very same one throughout.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the instance he went through the game solely with bombs or the attempt where he aimed to beat the story with zero stamina. A one-branch playthrough, however, seems unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole durability system, which is especially important when dealing with the most fragile tool in the entire world. But if the branch shatters, that's the end. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward answer is exploits. The full answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak the game's save file system to have separate game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” save where he advances normally, and the actual file, where he's restricted. The setup save has him going through the prologue and initial tutorial island, and this character gains full endurance and hearts. From this point, he starts a cutscene and halts midway through to tell the software to load an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets confused and generates a new game file that merges the conditions of the original two.

This creates new problems, however. The fused file has a protagonist that never acquired the capability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch fixes readily, but pulling it off means relying on an unstable version of the title that refuses to open certain areas. Like everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then patches the game midway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the prologue form of the hero is coded so that he is unable to break any tools he uses, presumably to avoid a situation where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer bypasses the wear problem, as the character he pulls between dimensions is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a clever trick, but not one that eliminates all possible difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that renders battles tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of determination and perseverance. It also aids that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant supply of consumables to boost his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a bug that allows him to phase through the environment. A few would find these means reason to discredit 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 viewer. He further uses a penalty of kinds stating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll remove one fan from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

PointCrow succeeds to defeat many of the game's bosses, but the battles appear painful. The YouTube edit of his quest doesn't make the audience endure the whole fights, which is a good thing when a few of them take multiple hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible twenty-three straight. The final villain showdown, which depletes the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The indestructible branch is after all only a piece of wood. He can't necessarily clone objects midway the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow manages to overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the software forces the user to use the Master Sword as the last strike, so technically, it's not completely a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

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