Streaming Personality Spends 37 Hours Trying to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Branch

One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that impose special rules on a gameplay session. Yet, although numerous players have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom with just a wooden stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the player who aimed to clear the adventure with a single branch—meaning, the exact same one throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the instance he played the title solely with bombs or the attempt where he aimed to defeat the game with no energy. A single stick playthrough, though, seems impossible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires Link to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the most fragile tool in the entire world. Yet if the branch breaks, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward explanation is exploits. The complete answer, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” file where he advances standardly, and the actual file, where he's restricted. The setup file has him going through the intro and first starting area, and this Link acquires full endurance and hearts. From here, he triggers a cinematic and pauses midway through to instruct the game to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The system gets mixed up and creates a new save file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

This causes fresh problems, however. The merged save file has a protagonist that did not acquired the capability to access shrines. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit fixes easily, but executing it means relying on an buggy version of the title that fails to open certain areas. Like other obstacles, he has a technical solution for it: He begins the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then updates the software midway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Challenges

Curiously, the introductory version of Link is coded so that he cannot damage any weapons he uses, presumably to prevent a scenario where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the durability issue, as the character he pulls across dimensions is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a clever technique, but not one that eradicates all possible friction. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that makes battles tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a question of grit and perseverance. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant number of items to improve his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also employs a bug that enables him to phase through the world. A few would consider these methods reason to discredit the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He also implements a penalty of sorts stating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll ban a fan from his live stream, establishing an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

The streamer manages to defeat several of the game's bosses, but the battles look grueling. The video version of his journey doesn't make the viewer sit through the entire fights, which is a good thing when some of them take several hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing twenty-three straight. The final villain showdown, which erases the hero's health as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is still only a stick. He is unable to necessarily clone objects during the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the game forces the player to use the Master Sword as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

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