Twitch Star Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Branch
You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that impose unique rules on a gameplay session. Yet, while many gamers have attempted to complete the game with just a stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the player who aimed to clear the game with a one branch—meaning, the very same one from start to finish.
PointCrow is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the time he played the title solely with explosives or the effort where he aimed to beat the story with zero stamina. A single stick run, however, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the whole weapon wear system, which is especially important when working with the most fragile weapon in the entire world. But if the branch breaks, that's the end. Game over.
The Method Behind the Madness
So, how? The simple answer is exploits. The full story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's save file system to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So the creator does a “setup” save where he progresses standardly, and the actual save, where he's limited. The setup file has him going through the intro and initial tutorial island, and this Link acquires full endurance and hearts. From here, he triggers a cinematic and pauses partway through to tell the software to open an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets confused and generates a new save file that merges the conditions of the first two files.
That causes fresh issues, though. The fused file has a protagonist that did not obtain the capability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch addresses readily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy version of the game that fails to open some locations. As with other obstacles, he has a clever solution for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then updates the game midway through to ensure it starts working properly.
Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles
Curiously, the prologue form of Link is programmed so that he cannot damage any tools he uses, presumably to prevent a scenario where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the wear problem, as the character he transfers between universes is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a smart technique, but not a method that eliminates all potential friction. The branch is nonetheless a ineffective item that makes encounters onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of grit and perseverance. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant number of items to boost his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a glitch that enables Link to clip through the world. A few would find these means grounds to discredit the legitimacy of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He also uses a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll remove a fan from his live stream, creating an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.
Major Battles and the Final Showdown
The streamer manages to defeat several of the game's main enemies, but the fights appear painful. The YouTube version of his quest spares the audience sit through the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them take multiple long hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible 23 hours. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes Link's health as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is after all just a stick. He can't always clone objects midway the fight.
Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he does defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the game forces the user to use the legendary weapon as the last strike, so technically, it's not completely a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?
When everything is said and done, PointCrow banned over a thousand people in his live stream. Rest in peace.
