Twitch Personality Dedicates 37 Straight Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Branch

One could think that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have run out of creative self-imposed challenges that apply unique restrictions on a playthrough. However, while many players have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom with only a stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the individual who endeavored to clear the adventure with a single branch—specifically, the very same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the instance he went through the game solely with bombs or the attempt where he tried to beat the story with no energy. A single stick playthrough, however, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is particularly relevant when working with the most fragile tool in the whole world. But if the branch breaks, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward answer is exploits. The full answer, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator does a “preparation” save where he advances standardly, and the real save, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him going through the intro and initial starting area, and this Link gains full endurance and hearts. From this point, he starts a cutscene and halts midway through to instruct the software to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and generates a new game file that merges the states of the first two files.

This creates fresh problems, though. The merged save file has a protagonist that never obtain the ability to enter shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses easily, but executing it means relying on an unstable build of the game that fails to load certain areas. As with everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He starts the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then updates the game midway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue form of Link is coded so that he is unable to break any tools he wields, likely to prevent a situation where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the durability issue, as the character he pulls between universes is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eradicates all possible difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that renders encounters onerous. But at that point, it's all a matter of determination and dedication. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that gives him an plentiful supply of consumables to boost his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He also makes use of a glitch that enables Link to phase through the world. Some would consider these methods reason to discredit the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He also implements a safeguard of sorts stating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll ban a viewer from his live stream, establishing an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

The streamer manages to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles appear painful. The video version of his quest spares the audience endure the entire fights, which is a good thing when some of them last several long hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an incredible 23 straight. The Ganondorf battle, which erases the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is after all just a piece of wood. He is unable to always duplicate items during the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow does overcome 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 fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, the streamer removed over 1,000 people in his Twitch chat. RIP.