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

One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted novel challenge runs that apply unique restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, while numerous gamers have attempted to finish the game using only a stick, streamer the streamer stands out as the player who aimed to beat the game with a single stick—specifically, the exact same one from start to finish.

The streamer is renowned for such difficult playthroughs, such as the time he went through the game using only bombs or the attempt where he tried to beat the game with no stamina. A one-branch playthrough, however, seems impossible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires the hero to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is particularly important when working with the most fragile weapon in the whole game. But if the branch shatters, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward answer is exploits. The full answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” file where he advances standardly, and the actual file, where he's restricted. The setup file has him completing the intro and initial tutorial island, and this character gains full stamina and health. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and halts midway through to instruct the game to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and creates a new game file that combines the states of the original two.

That causes fresh issues, however. The fused save file has a Link that did not obtain the capability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses easily, but executing it means relying on an unstable version of the title that fails to load certain areas. As with everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the software midway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the prologue form of the hero is coded so that he is unable to damage any weapons he uses, presumably to avoid a situation where the player gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the wear problem, as the Link he transfers across universes is the version from the start of the story. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eradicates all potential difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that renders battles tedious. But at that point, it's all a matter of grit and perseverance. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful number of consumables to improve his attack, or accumulate on healing spirits. He also employs a bug that allows him to phase through the environment. A few would find these means grounds to discredit the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He further uses a penalty of sorts stating that, for each fairy he uses, he'll ban a fan from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

The streamer succeeds to get through many of the game's bosses, but the battles look painful. The video version of his journey spares the viewer endure the entire fights, which is a good thing when a few of them take multiple hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing 23 straight. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is still just a stick. He is unable to always clone objects during the fight.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow does defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the software compels the player to wield the Master Sword as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a stick-only playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow banned more than 1,000 users in his live stream. Rest in peace.