Streaming Star Dedicates 37 Hours Trying to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Branch

One could think that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel challenge runs that apply unique rules on a gameplay session. Yet, although many players have tried to complete the game using just a wooden stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the player who aimed to clear the adventure with a one stick—specifically, the exact same stick from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for such difficult playthroughs, such as the time he went through the game using only explosives or the attempt where he tried to defeat the game with zero energy. A one-branch run, though, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the whole weapon wear system, which is especially relevant when dealing with the most fragile tool in the entire game. Yet if the stick shatters, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The simple explanation is exploits. The complete story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So PointCrow does a “setup” save where he progresses standardly, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him going through the prologue and first starting area, and this character acquires maximum stamina and hearts. From this point, he triggers a cutscene and halts midway through to instruct the game to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets mixed up and generates a third game file that combines the states of the first two files.

That causes fresh problems, however. The fused save file has a protagonist that never obtain the ability to access shrines. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit addresses readily, but executing it means relying on an unstable version of the game that refuses to load some areas. As with everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He starts the game on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the software midway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue version of Link is coded so that he cannot break any weapons he uses, likely to prevent a scenario where the user gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the wear problem, as the character he transfers across universes is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a smart technique, but not a method that eliminates all possible difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a weak item that renders battles onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of determination and dedication. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an plentiful number of consumables to improve his attack, or accumulate on healing spirits. He also makes use of a bug that enables him to phase through the world. A few would consider these methods reason to question the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a inventive player who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He also uses a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll remove one viewer from his live stream, establishing an motivation to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

PointCrow manages to get through several of the game's main enemies, but the battles look painful. The video edit of his journey spares the audience endure the whole fights, which is a blessing when some of them take several long hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible twenty-three hours. The final villain battle, which erases Link's hearts as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is still only a stick. He can't necessarily duplicate objects during the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the game forces the player to wield the Master Sword as the final attack, so technically, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

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