Streaming Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Hours Attempting to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Branch

One could think that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted novel challenge runs that impose special restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, while many gamers have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom with only a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the player who aimed to beat the adventure with a single branch—specifically, the exact same one throughout.

PointCrow is famous for such difficult playthroughs, such as the instance he went through the title solely with explosives or the attempt where he aimed to defeat the story with zero energy. A one-branch playthrough, however, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is particularly important when dealing with the weakest weapon in the whole game. But if the branch breaks, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple explanation is exploits. The complete answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So PointCrow does a “preparation” file where he advances normally, and the real file, where he's limited. The setup file has him going through the prologue and first starting area, and this Link gains maximum endurance and health. From here, he starts a cutscene and pauses partway through to instruct the software to open an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets confused and generates a new game file that merges the states of the first two files.

This creates new issues, though. The fused file has a protagonist that never obtain the capability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses readily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy build of the game that fails to open some areas. Like everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He starts the game on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the game partway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue form of the hero is coded so that he cannot break any tools he uses, likely to avoid a situation where the player gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's also how the streamer gets around the wear problem, as the Link he transfers between dimensions is the version from the start of the game. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eliminates all possible difficulty. The stick is still a ineffective item that renders encounters tedious. But at that point, it's all a question of determination and dedication. It also aids that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant number of items to boost his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He additionally makes use of a glitch that allows him to clip through the environment. Some would consider these methods reason to discredit the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He further implements a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for each fairy he uses, he'll ban a fan from his live stream, establishing an motivation to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

PointCrow succeeds to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights appear painful. The YouTube version of his quest doesn't make the audience sit through the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when a few of them last several hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible 23 hours. The final villain showdown, which depletes Link's health as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The indestructible stick is after all only a piece of wood. He is unable to necessarily duplicate items midway the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, he manages to overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the software compels the user to wield the Master Sword as the final strike, so technically, it's not completely a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

In the end, the streamer removed more than 1,000 people in his live stream. RIP.