Twitch Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Branch

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel challenge runs that apply unique restrictions on a playthrough. 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 player who endeavored to clear the adventure with a one branch—specifically, the exact same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for such challenge runs, like the time he played the game using only bombs or the attempt where he aimed to defeat the story with no energy. A one-branch playthrough, however, seems 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 mechanic, which is especially relevant when dealing with the weakest tool in the entire game. Yet if the branch shatters, that's the end. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward answer is exploits. The complete answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So PointCrow does a “setup” file where he progresses standardly, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The preparatory save has him going through the intro and first starting area, and this Link gains maximum endurance and hearts. From here, he starts a cutscene and pauses partway through to instruct the game to open an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and generates a third save file that combines the states of the original two.

This creates new problems, though. The merged save file has a protagonist that never acquired the ability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses easily, but pulling it off means depending on an unstable version of the title that fails to open certain locations. Like everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then updates the game partway through to ensure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the introductory version of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to damage any weapons he wields, presumably to avoid a situation where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the wear problem, as the character he transfers between universes is the version from the start of the story. It's a smart trick, but not a method that eliminates all possible friction. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that makes encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's all a matter of grit and perseverance. It further 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 also employs a bug that enables Link to clip through the environment. Some would find these means grounds to discredit the validity of the run, but in my mind, he's a resourceful player who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He further uses a safeguard of kinds stating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll ban a viewer from his live stream, creating an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

The streamer succeeds to get through several of the game's bosses, but the battles appear grueling. The YouTube version of his journey spares the viewer sit through the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when a few of them take several long hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an incredible 23 straight. The final villain battle, which erases the hero's health as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is still just a piece of wood. He is unable to necessarily clone objects midway the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow manages to overcome the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software forces the player to use the legendary weapon as the final strike, so technically, it's not completely a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow banned more than 1,000 users in his Twitch chat. RIP.