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

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have run out of creative challenge runs that apply unique rules on a gameplay session. However, while many players have attempted to finish the game with just a wooden stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the player who aimed to clear the game with a single branch—specifically, the exact same one throughout.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, like the time he went through the title using only bombs or the effort where he tried to beat the story with zero energy. A one-branch playthrough, though, sounds impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is especially relevant when dealing with the most fragile tool in the whole game. But if the stick breaks, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple answer is glitches. The complete story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator does a “setup” file where he advances standardly, and the real file, where he's limited. The setup save has him going through the intro and first starting area, and this Link gains maximum endurance and health. From here, he starts a cutscene and halts partway through to tell the game to load an automatic save from the branch-only file. The system gets confused and creates a third game file that merges the states of the original two.

This creates new issues, though. The merged file has a Link that never obtain the capability to enter shrines. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch addresses readily, but executing it means depending on an buggy version of the title that refuses to load certain areas. As with everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts the game on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the software midway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue version of Link is programmed so that he cannot break any tools he wields, presumably to prevent a scenario where the user gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer bypasses the wear problem, as the character he transfers between dimensions is the version from the beginning of the game. It's a clever technique, but not one that eradicates all potential difficulty. The branch is still a weak item that renders encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's all a matter of grit and dedication. It also aids that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful supply of consumables to improve his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a glitch that allows him to clip through the environment. Some would find these means reason to question the validity of the run, but in my mind, he's a resourceful player who is ready to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He also uses a safeguard of sorts stating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll remove a viewer from his live stream, creating an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to get through several of the game's bosses, but the battles look grueling. The video version of his journey spares the audience endure the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them last several long hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing 23 hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes Link's health as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable branch is after all only a stick. He is unable to always clone items midway the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, he manages to defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game forces the player to wield the Master Sword as the last strike, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow banned more than a thousand people in his Twitch chat. RIP.