Twitch Star Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Branch

One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that apply special restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, although numerous players have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom with only a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow stands out as the player who endeavored to beat the game with a one branch—specifically, the very same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the instance he went through the title solely with explosives or the attempt where he tried to defeat the game with zero energy. A single stick run, however, seems impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the weakest weapon in the whole game. But if the branch breaks, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple explanation is exploits. The full answer, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So PointCrow does a “preparation” file where he advances normally, and the actual file, where he's restricted. The setup save has him going through the intro and initial starting area, and this Link gains full stamina and hearts. From here, he triggers a cutscene and pauses midway through to tell the software to load an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets confused and creates a new game file that merges the states of the first two files.

This causes fresh issues, however. The fused file has a protagonist that never acquired the capability to access shrines. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch addresses readily, but executing it means relying on an buggy build of the game that fails to load some areas. As with other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the game midway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Curiously, the prologue form of Link is programmed so that he cannot break any weapons he wields, likely to avoid a scenario where the player gets trapped at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the wear problem, as the Link he pulls between universes is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eradicates all potential difficulty. The stick is still a weak item that makes battles onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of grit and perseverance. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant supply of consumables to boost his strength, or stock up on healing spirits. He also employs a glitch that enables Link to clip through the environment. Some would find these methods reason to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive player who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He further uses a penalty of kinds stating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll remove a viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to get through many of the game's bosses, but the battles look painful. The video edit of his journey doesn't make the viewer endure the whole conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them last multiple long hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing twenty-three straight. The Ganondorf battle, which erases Link's hearts as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is still just a stick. He can't always duplicate items during the battle.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, he manages to defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the game forces the player to use the legendary weapon as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow removed over a thousand users in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.