Streaming Personality Spends 37 Straight Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Branch

One could think that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that impose special rules on a playthrough. However, although many gamers have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom with just a stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the player who endeavored to beat the game with a single stick—meaning, the very same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for such challenge runs, such as the instance he played the game using only bombs or the effort where he tried to defeat the game with no energy. A one-branch playthrough, however, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is especially important when dealing with the weakest weapon in the entire world. Yet if the branch breaks, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is exploits. The full story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” file where he progresses standardly, and the real save, where he's limited. The setup file has him going through the intro and initial tutorial island, and this character acquires full stamina and health. From this point, he starts a cutscene and pauses midway through to instruct the game to open an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets confused and generates a new game file that merges the states of the first two files.

This causes fresh problems, though. The fused file has a protagonist that never acquired the ability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the file exploit fixes easily, but pulling it off means relying on an unstable build of the title that fails to open certain locations. As with other obstacles, he has a clever solution for it: He starts the game on its early version 1.0, and then updates the game midway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue version of Link is coded so that he cannot break any tools he uses, likely to prevent a scenario where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the durability issue, as the Link he transfers between universes is the one from the start of the game. It's a clever technique, but not one that eliminates all possible friction. The branch is nonetheless a weak weapon that renders encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of determination and perseverance. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an plentiful supply of consumables to boost his attack, or accumulate on healing spirits. He also employs a glitch that allows him to phase through the environment. A few would find these methods reason to question the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He also implements a safeguard of sorts stating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll ban one fan from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

The streamer succeeds to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights appear grueling. The YouTube version of his quest spares the audience sit through the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them last several hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf battle, which erases the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is still just a piece of wood. He is unable to always duplicate items midway the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the software forces the player to use the Master Sword as the last attack, so technically, it's not quite completely a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow removed more than 1,000 users in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.