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

One could think that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have run out of novel self-imposed challenges that impose unique rules on a gameplay session. Yet, although many players have tried to complete the game with just a stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the individual who aimed to beat the game with a single branch—specifically, the exact same one throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the instance he played the title solely with explosives or the effort where he aimed to beat the story with no energy. A one-branch run, however, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which forces the hero to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is particularly important when dealing with the weakest tool in the entire world. But if the branch breaks, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward answer is exploits. The full story, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator does a “setup” save where he advances normally, and the real file, where he's limited. The preparatory file has him completing the prologue and first tutorial island, and this character gains maximum stamina and hearts. From here, he starts a cutscene and halts partway through to instruct the software to open an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and generates a third game file that merges the states of the first two files.

This creates fresh issues, however. The fused file has a protagonist that never obtain the capability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes easily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy build of the game that fails to open some areas. Like everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the game partway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Additional Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue form of Link is programmed so that he is unable to break any tools he uses, likely to avoid a scenario where the user gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the durability problem, as the Link he pulls between universes is the version from the start of the story. It's a clever technique, but not one that eradicates all potential difficulty. The stick is still a ineffective item that makes encounters onerous. But at that point, it's all a question of determination and dedication. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an plentiful supply of items to improve his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also makes use of a glitch that enables Link to phase through the environment. Some would consider these means grounds to discredit the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He further implements a penalty of sorts stating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll ban a fan from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

The streamer manages to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights appear grueling. The YouTube edit of his journey doesn't make the viewer endure the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when a few of them last several long hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an incredible 23 hours. The final villain showdown, which erases the hero's health as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is after all just a stick. He can't always duplicate items midway the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow does overcome the beast form of the antagonist. But the game compels the player to use the legendary weapon as the final strike, so technically, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, the streamer removed more than 1,000 users in his Twitch chat. RIP.