Streaming Star Dedicates 37 Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Branch
You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of creative self-imposed challenges that impose special rules on a gameplay session. However, although numerous players have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom with just a stick, streamer the streamer stands out as the player who endeavored to clear the game with a single branch—specifically, the exact same stick throughout.
The streamer is famous for such difficult playthroughs, like the time he went through the game solely with explosives or the attempt where he aimed to defeat the game with zero energy. A one-branch playthrough, however, seems unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly important when dealing with the weakest tool in the entire game. But if the branch breaks, that's the end. It's over.
So, How?
How did he do it? The simple explanation is glitches. The complete story, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that affect one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” save where he advances normally, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The preparatory save has him completing the intro and first tutorial island, and this Link gains maximum endurance and health. From here, he starts a cinematic and halts midway through to instruct the software to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets mixed up and creates a third game file that merges the states of the first two files.
That creates fresh problems, though. The fused save file has a Link that did not obtain the capability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses easily, but pulling it off means depending on an unstable version of the game that fails to load some areas. Like everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the software midway through to ensure it starts working properly.
Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles
Curiously, the prologue version of Link is coded so that he is unable to break any tools he wields, presumably to avoid a situation where the user gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the durability issue, as the Link he transfers between dimensions is the one from the start of the game. It's a clever trick, but not one that eradicates all possible friction. The branch is still a weak weapon that renders encounters tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of determination and dedication. It further helps 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 also makes use of a glitch that enables him to clip through the world. A few would find these means grounds to question the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He also implements a penalty of sorts stating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll remove a viewer from his live stream, establishing an motivation to not overly rely on them.
Major Battles and the Last Encounter
PointCrow manages to get through many of the game's main enemies, but the fights appear grueling. The YouTube edit of his journey doesn't make the audience sit through the whole fights, which is a blessing when some of them take multiple hours. One boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing 23 hours. The final villain battle, which depletes Link's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is still only a stick. He is unable to necessarily clone items midway the battle.
Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the game forces the player to use the legendary weapon as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?
In the end, PointCrow removed more than 1,000 users in his live stream. Rest in peace.
