Twitch Star Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Branch

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted creative challenge runs that impose unique rules on a playthrough. However, although many players have attempted to finish the game using just a stick, content creator PointCrow stands out as the individual who endeavored to clear the adventure with a one branch—meaning, the very same one throughout.

The streamer is famous for such difficult playthroughs, such as the time he went through the title solely with bombs or the attempt where he tried to defeat the story with no energy. A single stick playthrough, though, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire durability system, which is particularly important when dealing with the weakest tool in the whole world. Yet if the branch breaks, that's the end. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is glitches. The full answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator does a “preparation” file where he advances normally, and the actual save, where he's limited. The setup file has him completing the intro and initial tutorial island, and this character gains maximum endurance and health. From here, he triggers a cutscene and pauses partway through to instruct the game to load an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets mixed up and creates a new save file that merges the states of the original two.

That creates new problems, though. The merged file has a Link that never acquired the capability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes readily, but executing it means depending on an buggy version of the title that fails to open certain areas. Like everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He begins the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then updates the game partway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue form of Link is coded so that he is unable to damage any weapons he uses, likely to prevent a situation where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer bypasses the wear issue, as the Link he pulls across dimensions is the one from the start of the story. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eliminates all possible difficulty. The branch is still a weak weapon that renders encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of grit and dedication. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an plentiful supply of consumables to boost his attack, or stock up on healing spirits. He also employs a glitch that allows Link to phase through the world. Some would consider these means reason to discredit the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive player who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He also uses a safeguard of sorts stating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll ban one viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

The streamer manages to get through many of the game's bosses, but the battles look grueling. The YouTube edit of his quest spares the viewer sit through the entire fights, which is a good thing when some of them last several long hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible twenty-three hours. The final villain battle, which erases the hero's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is after all only a stick. He is unable to always duplicate items midway the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, he does defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the software forces the player to wield the Master Sword as the final strike, so technically, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

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