Twitch Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Branch

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that apply unique restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, although many players have attempted to complete the game using just a stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the player who aimed to clear the game with a one branch—specifically, the very same stick throughout.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the instance he went through the title using only explosives or the attempt where he tried to beat the game with zero energy. A single stick playthrough, however, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is particularly relevant when working with the most fragile weapon in the whole world. But if the stick shatters, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple explanation is glitches. The complete story, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator does a “preparation” file where he progresses normally, and the actual file, where he's limited. The preparatory file has him completing the prologue and first tutorial island, and this character acquires maximum stamina and hearts. From here, he triggers a cinematic and halts partway through to tell the software to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and creates a third game file that merges the states of the first two files.

This causes new issues, however. The fused file has a protagonist that never obtain the capability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes easily, but pulling it off means relying on an unstable build of the game that fails to load some areas. Like other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins the game on its early version 1.0, and then patches the game midway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue form of Link is coded so that he is unable to break any weapons he uses, likely to avoid a situation where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the adventure. But that's also how the streamer gets around the durability issue, as the character he pulls between universes is the version from the beginning of the game. It's a clever trick, but not one that eliminates all potential friction. The stick is still a ineffective weapon that makes battles tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of grit and dedication. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful supply of consumables to boost his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a bug that enables Link to clip through the world. A few would consider these means grounds to discredit the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He also implements a penalty of sorts stating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll remove one viewer from his live stream, creating an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

The streamer succeeds to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights appear painful. The YouTube edit of his journey spares the viewer sit through the whole fights, which is a blessing when a few of them last multiple hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing twenty-three straight. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases the hero's health as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is still just a stick. He is unable to necessarily clone items midway the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game forces the player to use the legendary weapon as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a stick-only playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed more than a thousand users in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.