Twitch Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Branch

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have run out of creative self-imposed challenges that impose special restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, although many players have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom using just a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow stands out as the individual who endeavored to clear the adventure with a single branch—meaning, the exact same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the instance he went through the game using only bombs or the effort where he aimed to beat the game with zero energy. A one-branch run, however, sounds impossible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires the hero to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the most fragile tool in the whole game. Yet if the stick breaks, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The simple answer is exploits. The complete story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So the creator does a “preparation” save where he advances standardly, and the real file, where he's restricted. The setup save has him going through the prologue and initial tutorial island, and this Link acquires full endurance and health. From here, he starts a cutscene and pauses partway through to instruct the game to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets mixed up and creates a new game file that combines the conditions of the first two files.

This causes new issues, though. The merged file has a protagonist that never obtain the capability to enter shrines. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch fixes readily, but pulling it off means depending on an unstable build of the title that refuses to load certain locations. Like everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the software midway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the introductory version of Link is programmed so that he is unable to break any weapons he uses, presumably to prevent a scenario where the player gets trapped at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the durability issue, as the Link he pulls across dimensions is the version from the start of the story. It's a smart trick, but not one that eradicates all possible difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a ineffective item that renders battles tedious. But at that stage, it's all a question of determination and dedication. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful supply of consumables to boost his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally employs a bug that enables him to phase through the environment. Some would find these means grounds to question the legitimacy of the run, but in my mind, he's a resourceful player who is ready to do whatever it takes to engage his audience. He further implements a penalty of sorts stating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll ban one viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

PointCrow manages to defeat many of the game's main enemies, but the fights appear painful. The video version of his journey doesn't make the viewer endure the whole fights, which is a blessing when some of them take multiple long hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible 23 straight. The final villain battle, which depletes Link's hearts as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is after all only a piece of wood. He is unable to necessarily duplicate items during the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he does overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the software compels the user to wield the legendary weapon as the last strike, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a stick-only run. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed over a thousand users in his Twitch chat. RIP.