Streaming Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Branch

One could think that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have run out of novel challenge runs that apply special rules on a gameplay session. Yet, although many gamers have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom using just a stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the individual who endeavored to clear the game with a one branch—meaning, the exact same one throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for such difficult playthroughs, like the time he went through the title solely with explosives or the effort where he aimed to beat the story with zero stamina. A one-branch playthrough, however, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the weakest weapon in the entire game. But if the branch shatters, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple explanation is glitches. The complete story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” save where he advances normally, and the real file, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him going through the prologue and first tutorial island, and this Link acquires maximum endurance and health. From here, he triggers a cinematic and pauses midway through to tell the game to load an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets confused and generates a new save file that combines the states of the original two.

That creates fresh problems, however. The merged file has a Link that never acquired the ability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes easily, but executing it means relying on an buggy version of the title that fails to load certain locations. Like other obstacles, 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 midway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory version of Link is coded so that he is unable to break any weapons he wields, presumably to prevent a scenario where the user gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the durability issue, as the Link he transfers between dimensions is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a clever trick, but not one that eradicates all potential difficulty. The stick is still a ineffective weapon that renders battles onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of determination and perseverance. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant number of items to boost his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He also makes use of a glitch that allows Link to clip through the world. A few would consider these methods grounds to discredit the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He further uses a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll remove one viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

The streamer succeeds to defeat several of the game's bosses, but the fights look grueling. The YouTube version of his quest doesn't make the audience endure the entire conflicts, which is a good thing when a few of them take several hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing 23 hours. The final villain battle, which depletes Link's health as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is after all just a piece of wood. He can't always clone items during the fight.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow does overcome the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software forces the user to wield the Master Sword as the final strike, so technically, it's not quite fully a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow removed over a thousand people in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.