Twitch Star Dedicates Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Branch

One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted novel challenge runs that impose special restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, while many players have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom with just a wooden stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the individual who aimed to clear the game with a one branch—specifically, the exact same one throughout.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the instance he played the game solely with bombs or the effort where he aimed to beat the story with no energy. A one-branch run, though, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires the hero to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is particularly important when working with the weakest tool in the whole game. Yet if the branch breaks, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple explanation is glitches. The full answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” file where he advances standardly, and the real save, where he's restricted. The preparatory save has him completing the intro and first starting area, and this Link gains full endurance and hearts. From here, he starts a cutscene and halts midway through to instruct the software to load an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and creates a new save file that merges the conditions of the original two.

This creates fresh problems, however. The fused file has a Link that never obtain the ability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses readily, but executing it means depending on an unstable build of the title that fails to open some areas. Like other obstacles, he has a technical solution for it: He starts the game on its early version 1.0, and then updates the software midway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Curiously, the introductory form of Link is coded so that he is unable to damage any weapons he wields, presumably to prevent a situation where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the durability problem, as the Link he pulls between dimensions is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eliminates all potential difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that renders battles tedious. But at that point, 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 boost his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also employs a bug that enables Link to phase through the environment. Some would consider these means grounds to question the validity of the run, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He further implements a penalty of sorts stating that, for each fairy he uses, he'll ban one viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

The streamer manages to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights look painful. The YouTube version of his journey spares the audience sit through the whole fights, which is a blessing when some of them last several hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing 23 hours. The final villain battle, which depletes Link's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is after all just a piece of wood. He is unable to always clone items during the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow does overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the software forces the user to wield the legendary weapon as the last strike, so technically, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow removed more than a thousand people in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.