Twitch Star Dedicates 37 Hours Attempting to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Branch

One could think that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted creative challenge runs that apply unique rules on a gameplay session. However, although many players have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom with just a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the player who aimed to clear the adventure with a one branch—specifically, the exact same one throughout.

PointCrow is famous for such difficult playthroughs, such as the time he played the title using only bombs or the effort where he aimed to beat the story with no energy. A one-branch run, however, seems impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is especially relevant when dealing with the most fragile tool in the whole game. Yet if the branch shatters, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The straightforward 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 separate game sessions that impact one another. So PointCrow does a “setup” save where he progresses normally, and the actual save, where he's limited. The setup save has him completing the intro and initial tutorial island, and this character gains full endurance and health. From this point, he starts a cinematic and pauses midway through to instruct the software to load an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets confused and creates a third game file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

That creates fresh problems, however. The fused save file has a Link that did not acquired the capability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes readily, but pulling it off means depending on an unstable build of the game that refuses to open some locations. As with other obstacles, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the game partway through to ensure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue form of Link is coded so that he is unable to break any weapons he uses, likely to prevent a scenario where the user gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the durability problem, as the Link he pulls across universes is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a smart trick, but not a method that eliminates all potential difficulty. The stick is still a weak item that renders battles onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of grit and perseverance. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that gives him an plentiful number of consumables to improve his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also employs a bug that allows Link to clip through the environment. A few would find these methods grounds to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive player who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He also uses a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll ban a viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

PointCrow manages to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles appear grueling. The YouTube edit of his journey spares the viewer sit through the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when a few of them last multiple long hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing 23 straight. The Ganondorf battle, which erases Link's hearts as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is still just a piece of wood. He can't necessarily duplicate items midway the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow does overcome the beast form of the antagonist. But the software forces the player to use the legendary weapon as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed over 1,000 users in his live stream. RIP.