Streaming Personality Spends 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 arrived, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that impose special rules on a playthrough. However, while numerous gamers have attempted to finish the game with only a stick, content creator PointCrow stands out as the player who endeavored to beat the game with a single branch—specifically, the exact same one throughout.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, like the instance he went through the game using only explosives or the effort where he aimed to beat the story with zero stamina. A one-branch playthrough, however, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole weapon wear system, which is especially relevant when dealing with the weakest tool in the entire game. Yet if the stick breaks, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is exploits. The full story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So the creator does a “preparation” file where he progresses normally, and the real file, where he's limited. The setup file has him completing the intro and first starting area, and this character gains maximum endurance and health. From here, he starts a cinematic and halts partway through to instruct the game to load an automatic save from the branch-only file. The system gets confused and generates a new save file that merges the conditions of the original two.

This causes fresh issues, however. The merged file has a protagonist that never acquired the ability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the file exploit addresses easily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy version of the title that refuses to load some areas. As with other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the game partway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the introductory form of Link is coded so that he cannot damage any tools he wields, presumably to avoid a situation where the player gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the durability problem, as the Link he pulls between dimensions is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eliminates all possible friction. The stick is still a ineffective item that renders battles tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of determination and perseverance. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an plentiful supply of items to boost his attack, or accumulate on healing spirits. He also makes use of a glitch that enables him to phase through the environment. Some would find these methods reason to question the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his audience. He also implements a safeguard of kinds stating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll ban one fan from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

PointCrow manages to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights appear painful. The video edit of his journey spares the audience sit through the entire fights, which is a good thing when some of them take several long hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases the hero's health as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is after all just a piece of wood. He is unable to necessarily clone items during the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, he does defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the game compels the player to wield the legendary weapon as the final attack, so technically, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow removed more than a thousand users in his live stream. Rest in peace.