Streaming Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Branch

You might assume that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that apply unique rules on a gameplay session. Yet, while many gamers have tried to finish the game with only a stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the player who aimed to beat the adventure with a single stick—meaning, the very same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for such challenge runs, such as the instance he played the game using only explosives or the attempt where he aimed to beat the game with zero energy. A one-branch run, however, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces the hero to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire durability system, which is particularly important when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the entire world. But if the branch shatters, that's the end. It's 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 distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator creates a “setup” save where he progresses standardly, and the actual file, where he's limited. The setup file has him going through the prologue and first starting area, and this character acquires maximum endurance and health. From this point, he triggers a cutscene and pauses partway through to instruct the game to load an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets confused and generates a new save file that combines the states of the first two files.

That causes new problems, however. The fused file has a protagonist that never acquired the capability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch addresses easily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy build of the game that refuses to load certain locations. As with other obstacles, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the game partway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue form of Link is coded so that he cannot break any tools he wields, likely to prevent a situation where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer bypasses the wear problem, as the character he transfers between dimensions is the version from the start of the game. It's a smart technique, but not one that eradicates all possible difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a weak weapon that makes encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's all a question of grit and perseverance. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that gives him an plentiful supply of consumables to improve his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He also employs a bug that allows Link to clip through the world. A few would consider these means grounds to discredit the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive player who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He further uses a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll remove a viewer from his live stream, establishing an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

The streamer succeeds to defeat many of the game's bosses, but the battles appear painful. The YouTube edit of his journey doesn't make the audience endure the whole fights, which is a blessing when some of them last multiple long hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible 23 straight. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes the hero's health as it unfolds, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is still only a piece of wood. He is unable to necessarily duplicate items midway the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game compels the player to wield the Master Sword as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, the streamer removed more than 1,000 users in his live stream. Rest in peace.