Streaming Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Beat <em>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 arrived, fans would have run out of creative self-imposed challenges that impose special restrictions on a gameplay session. However, although numerous gamers have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom with only a stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the player who aimed to beat the game with a one stick—meaning, the very same one from start to finish.

The streamer is renowned for such challenge runs, such as the time he played the title solely with bombs or the attempt where he aimed to defeat the game with zero energy. A single stick playthrough, though, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the entire durability system, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the weakest tool in the entire game. Yet if the stick breaks, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple answer is exploits. The full story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So the creator does a “setup” save where he advances normally, and the actual save, where he's limited. The setup save has him going through the intro and initial tutorial island, and this Link acquires maximum endurance and health. From here, he triggers a cinematic and halts midway through to instruct the software to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets confused and creates a new game file that combines the conditions of the first two files.

That creates new problems, however. The fused file has a protagonist that never acquired the capability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch fixes easily, but executing it means relying on an buggy build of the game that fails to open some areas. As with everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then updates the game partway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the prologue version of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to damage any tools he wields, presumably to prevent a scenario where the user gets trapped at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the wear problem, as the Link he transfers between universes is the version 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 item that renders encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's all a matter of determination and perseverance. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful supply of items to boost his strength, or stock up on healing spirits. He also makes use of a bug that allows Link to clip through the environment. Some would find these methods reason to discredit the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He also uses a penalty of sorts stating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll ban a fan from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

The streamer succeeds to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights look grueling. The YouTube version of his quest spares the viewer endure the entire fights, which is a good thing when a few of them last multiple long hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing 23 hours. The Ganondorf battle, which erases the hero's health as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is after all just a stick. He can't necessarily clone items midway the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow manages to overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the software forces the player to use the legendary weapon as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed more than a thousand people in his live stream. Rest in peace.