Streaming Star Spends 37 Hours Trying to Conquer <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 novel self-imposed challenges that impose special rules on a gameplay session. However, although numerous players have tried to finish the game using only a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow stands out as the individual who aimed to beat the game with a one branch—specifically, the exact same one throughout.
PointCrow is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the time he went through the game using only bombs or the effort where he aimed to beat the story with no energy. A single stick run, however, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires the hero to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly important when working with the weakest weapon in the entire game. Yet if the stick shatters, that's the end. Game over.
The Method Behind the Madness
How did he do it? The simple answer is glitches. The complete story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” file where he progresses standardly, and the actual save, where he's limited. The setup file has him going through the intro and initial tutorial island, and this Link gains maximum stamina and hearts. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and halts midway through to tell the game to open an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets confused and creates a new save file that merges the conditions of the first two files.
That causes fresh issues, though. The fused file has a protagonist that never obtain the ability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the file exploit fixes easily, but executing it means relying on an unstable version of the title that refuses to open some areas. Like everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then patches the game midway through to make sure it starts working properly.
Overcoming Durability and Other Hurdles
Interestingly, the introductory form of Link is coded so that he is unable to break any weapons he uses, likely to avoid a scenario where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the durability problem, as the character he pulls between dimensions is the one from the start of the story. It's a smart technique, but not one that eliminates all possible difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that makes battles tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of determination and perseverance. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant number of items to boost his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He additionally makes use of a glitch that enables him to clip through the environment. Some would consider these methods reason to discredit the legitimacy of the run, 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 stipulating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll remove a viewer from his live stream, establishing an motivation to not depend too much on them.
Major Battles and the Final Encounter
The streamer succeeds to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles look painful. The YouTube edit of his journey spares the audience sit through the whole fights, which is a good thing when some of them take several long hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing 23 straight. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes Link's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is after all just a stick. He can't always clone items during the battle.
Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to overcome the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software forces the player to use the legendary weapon as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not completely a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?
When everything is said and done, PointCrow removed over 1,000 people in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.