Twitch Star Dedicates Thirty-Seven Hours Attempting to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Branch

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that impose special rules on a playthrough. Yet, while numerous gamers have attempted to finish the game with only a wooden stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the player who aimed to beat the adventure with a one stick—specifically, the exact 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 no stamina. A single stick playthrough, though, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is especially relevant when working with the most fragile tool in the entire world. Yet if the stick shatters, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is exploits. The complete answer, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” file where he progresses normally, and the actual save, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him going through the intro and initial starting area, and this character gains maximum endurance and health. From this point, he starts a cinematic and pauses midway through to tell the game to load an automatic save from the branch-only file. The system gets mixed up and creates a new save file that combines the states of the original two.

That causes fresh problems, however. The fused file has a protagonist that never acquired the capability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch addresses easily, but pulling it off means depending on an unstable build of the title that refuses to load certain areas. Like everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the game midway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue form of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to damage any tools he uses, presumably to prevent a situation where the player gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the wear issue, as the Link he pulls between dimensions is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a smart technique, but not a method that eliminates all potential friction. The stick is still a weak item that makes battles onerous. But at that point, it's all a matter of grit and dedication. It also aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant supply of consumables to boost his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a glitch that enables Link to phase through the environment. Some would consider these means grounds to discredit the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to engage his audience. He also implements a penalty of sorts stating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll ban one viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

The streamer succeeds to get through many of the game's main enemies, but the fights appear painful. The video edit of his quest spares the viewer sit through the whole fights, which is a good thing when some of them last several hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases the hero's health as it unfolds, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible stick is after all only a piece of wood. He is unable to always clone objects midway the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow manages to overcome the beast form of the antagonist. But the software forces the user to wield the Master Sword as the final strike, so technically, it's not fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow banned more than a thousand people in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.