Streaming Star Dedicates 37 Straight 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 debuted, fans would have exhausted creative challenge runs that impose special restrictions on a gameplay session. However, while numerous players have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom with only a stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the player who endeavored to beat the adventure with a one stick—meaning, the very same stick throughout.

The streamer is famous for such challenge runs, such as the instance he played the title using only bombs or the effort where he aimed to defeat the story with no stamina. A one-branch playthrough, however, seems impossible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which forces the hero to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole weapon wear system, which is especially relevant when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the entire world. But if the stick breaks, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

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 save file system to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” save where he advances normally, and the actual save, where he's limited. The setup save has him going through the intro and first tutorial island, and this character gains maximum stamina and hearts. From here, he triggers a cutscene and halts partway through to tell the game to open an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and generates a new game file that merges the states of the first two files.

That creates new problems, however. The merged file has a protagonist that never acquired the capability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch fixes easily, but executing it means depending on an unstable build of the game that refuses to load certain locations. As with everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then patches the software midway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory form of Link is programmed so that he cannot break any tools he wields, likely to avoid a situation where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer bypasses the durability issue, as the character he transfers across universes is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eradicates all possible friction. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective item that makes battles onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a question of determination and perseverance. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant number of items to boost his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He also employs a bug that enables him to clip through the world. A few would consider these methods reason to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He also implements a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll ban a viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

PointCrow manages to defeat several of the game's bosses, but the battles look painful. The YouTube version of his quest doesn't make the audience sit through the whole fights, which is a blessing when some of them last several long hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an incredible twenty-three straight. The final villain battle, which erases Link's health as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is after all just a piece of wood. He can't always duplicate objects during the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the game forces the user to wield the Master Sword as the final attack, so technically, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer banned more than a thousand users in his live stream. RIP.