Twitch Personality Dedicates 37 Straight Attempting to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Branch

You might assume that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have run out of novel self-imposed challenges that apply unique rules on a gameplay session. However, although numerous players have attempted to complete the game using only a wooden stick, streamer the streamer stands out as the player who aimed to beat the adventure with a one branch—meaning, the very same stick from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the time he played the title solely with bombs or the effort where he tried to beat the game with no stamina. A one-branch playthrough, though, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is especially relevant when dealing with the weakest tool in the whole world. Yet if the branch shatters, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple explanation is exploits. The full story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak the game's save file system to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” file where he advances standardly, and the actual file, where he's limited. The preparatory file has him completing the intro and initial tutorial island, and this character gains full endurance and health. From this point, he starts a cinematic and halts partway through to tell the game to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and generates a new game file that merges the states of the original two.

That causes fresh problems, though. The merged file has a protagonist that never acquired the capability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses easily, but executing it means depending on an unstable version of the game that refuses to load some locations. As with other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then updates the software partway through to ensure it starts working properly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue version of the hero is coded so that he cannot damage any tools he uses, presumably to prevent a scenario where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the wear problem, as the character he transfers between dimensions is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a smart trick, but not a method that eliminates all possible difficulty. The stick is still a ineffective weapon that makes encounters onerous. But at that point, it's all a matter of grit and dedication. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant number of items to boost his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a bug that enables Link to phase through the environment. Some would consider these methods grounds to question the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive player who is ready to do whatever it takes to engage his audience. He also uses a safeguard of kinds stating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll remove one viewer from his live stream, creating an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

The streamer manages to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights look painful. The YouTube edit of his quest doesn't make the viewer sit through the entire fights, which is a blessing when some of them take several hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible twenty-three straight. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes Link's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable branch is still just a piece of wood. He is unable to necessarily duplicate objects midway the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the software forces the player to use the Master Sword as the final attack, so technically, it's not quite completely a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow removed over 1,000 users in his live stream. RIP.