Streaming Star Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Branch
One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that apply special rules on a gameplay session. However, while many gamers have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom with only a stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the individual who endeavored to clear the game with a one stick—meaning, the exact same one throughout.
The streamer is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, like the instance he went through the title solely with explosives or the effort where he aimed to defeat the game with no stamina. A one-branch run, though, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero 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 stick shatters, that's the end. It's over.
The Method Behind the Madness
So, how? The simple explanation is exploits. The complete answer, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator does a “preparation” file where he progresses normally, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The setup file has him completing the prologue and initial starting area, and this Link acquires maximum stamina and health. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and halts partway through to instruct the software to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and creates a third save file that merges the conditions of the original two.
This causes new problems, however. The merged file has a protagonist that did not acquired the ability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses readily, but executing it means relying on an unstable build of the game that refuses to load some areas. Like everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He begins the game on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the software partway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.
Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges
Interestingly, the prologue form of the hero is coded so that he cannot damage any weapons he wields, likely to prevent a situation where the user gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the wear issue, as the Link he transfers between universes is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a clever trick, but not one that eradicates all potential difficulty. The stick is still a weak weapon that renders encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's all a matter of grit and dedication. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful number of consumables to improve his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a bug that enables Link to clip through the environment. A few would find these methods reason to question the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He also uses a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll ban one viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to not depend too much on them.
Major Battles and the Final Encounter
The streamer succeeds to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights look grueling. The YouTube version of his journey doesn't make the viewer sit through the entire fights, which is a good thing when some of them take several long hours. One boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing 23 hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases Link's health as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is after all just a piece of wood. He can't necessarily clone objects midway the fight.
Did he succeed? Technically, he manages to defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the software forces the user to wield the Master Sword as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?
When everything is said and done, the streamer banned over a thousand users in his Twitch chat. RIP.
