Twitch Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Stick

One could think that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that apply unique rules on a gameplay session. Yet, while numerous gamers have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom with just a wooden stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the player who aimed to clear the adventure with a one branch—meaning, the exact same stick from start to finish.

The streamer is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, like the time he went through the game solely with explosives or the effort where he aimed to defeat the story with zero energy. A one-branch run, though, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is especially relevant when working with the weakest weapon in the whole world. But if the branch shatters, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple answer is exploits. The full answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that impact one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” save where he advances normally, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The setup file has him going through the intro and first tutorial island, and this character gains maximum endurance and hearts. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and halts partway through to instruct the software to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The system gets confused and generates a third save file that combines the states of the first two files.

That creates fresh problems, though. The fused file has a protagonist that did not acquired the ability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses readily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy version of the title that fails to open some areas. Like everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the game midway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory form of the hero is coded so that he cannot break any weapons he wields, likely to prevent a scenario where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the wear issue, as the Link he pulls between dimensions is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a clever trick, but not one that eliminates all potential difficulty. The branch is still a ineffective item that makes battles tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of grit and dedication. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant supply of items to boost his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally employs a glitch that allows Link to phase through the environment. A few would consider these methods reason to question the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a inventive player who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He further uses a penalty of sorts stating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll ban a viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

The streamer manages to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles appear grueling. The YouTube edit of his journey spares the viewer sit through the entire fights, which is a good thing when a few of them take several hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an incredible twenty-three hours. The final villain battle, which erases the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible branch is after all just a stick. He is unable to necessarily clone objects midway the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, he manages to defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the software compels the user to use the legendary weapon as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed more than 1,000 people in his Twitch chat. RIP.