Streaming Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Attempting to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Branch

One could think that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative challenge runs that impose unique restrictions on a playthrough. However, although numerous players have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom with just a stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the individual who aimed to beat the adventure with a single branch—meaning, the exact same stick throughout.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the instance he played the title solely with bombs or the attempt where he tried to beat the game with zero stamina. A single stick playthrough, though, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly important when dealing with the weakest tool in the entire world. Yet if the stick breaks, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is exploits. The full story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator creates a “setup” save where he progresses standardly, and the actual file, where he's limited. The setup save has him going through the prologue and initial starting area, and this character acquires full endurance and health. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and pauses midway through to instruct the software to load an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets confused and generates a third save file that combines the states of the original two.

That causes new problems, however. The fused file has a Link that never obtain the ability to access shrines. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit fixes easily, but executing it means depending on an buggy build of the title that fails to load certain locations. As with everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins the game on its early version 1.0, and then patches the game partway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the introductory form of the hero is coded so that he is unable to break any tools he uses, presumably to prevent a scenario where the player gets trapped at the start of the adventure. But that's also how the streamer gets around the durability issue, as the Link he transfers between universes is the version from the start of the story. It's a smart technique, but not one that eliminates all potential difficulty. The stick is still a weak weapon that renders encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's all a question of grit and dedication. It also aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant number of items to boost his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also makes use of a glitch that allows him to clip through the environment. A few would find these methods grounds to discredit the legitimacy of the run, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to engage his audience. He further uses a safeguard of sorts stating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll remove a viewer from his live stream, creating an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

The streamer succeeds to defeat several of the game's bosses, but the battles look painful. The YouTube edit of his quest spares the audience endure the whole fights, which is a blessing when some of them take multiple long hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible twenty-three hours. The final villain showdown, which erases Link's health as it unfolds, is a notable tense moment. The indestructible branch is still just a piece of wood. He is unable to necessarily clone objects during the fight.

So, is it possible? Technically, he manages to defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the game compels the player to wield the Master Sword as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow removed more than 1,000 users in his live stream. RIP.