Twitch Star Spends 37 Hours Attempting to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Branch

One could think that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: 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 attempted to complete the game using just a wooden stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the individual who endeavored to clear the adventure with a one branch—specifically, the very same stick from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the time he went through the title solely with bombs or the effort where he aimed to defeat the game with no energy. A single stick playthrough, though, sounds impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly important when dealing with the most fragile tool in the entire game. But if the branch shatters, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple explanation is glitches. The full story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak the game's save file system to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator creates a “setup” file where he progresses standardly, and the real file, where he's limited. The preparatory file has him completing the prologue and first tutorial island, and this Link gains maximum stamina and health. From here, he triggers a cutscene and pauses midway through to instruct the game to load an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and creates a new save file that combines the conditions of the original two.

This causes fresh issues, though. The fused save file has a protagonist that did not obtain the capability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses easily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy build of the game that fails to load certain locations. Like other obstacles, he has a clever solution for it: He begins the game on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the game midway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the prologue form of Link is coded so that he cannot damage any weapons he uses, likely to prevent a situation where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the durability problem, as the character he transfers across dimensions is the version from the start of the story. It's a clever technique, but not one that eliminates all possible friction. The branch is still a weak item that makes battles tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of grit and perseverance. It also aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an plentiful supply of consumables to improve his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He also makes use of a bug that allows Link to phase through the environment. Some would find these methods reason to question the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He also implements a safeguard of kinds stipulating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll ban one viewer from his live stream, establishing an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

PointCrow succeeds to get through many of the game's main enemies, but the battles appear painful. The video version of his journey spares the audience endure the whole fights, which is a good thing when some of them take several long hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing 23 straight. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes Link's health as it unfolds, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible branch is after all only a stick. He is unable to necessarily clone objects during the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow manages to defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the software forces the user to wield the legendary weapon as the last strike, so strictly speaking, it's not completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer banned over 1,000 people in his live stream. Rest in peace.