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

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel challenge runs that apply special restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, although numerous gamers have tried to complete the game using only a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the player who endeavored to clear the game with a one branch—specifically, the exact same one throughout.

PointCrow is famous for such difficult playthroughs, like the time he played the game solely with explosives or the effort where he tried to defeat the story with zero stamina. A one-branch run, though, seems impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole durability system, which is especially important when working with the weakest weapon in the whole game. But if the branch breaks, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward answer is exploits. The full answer, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak the game's save file system to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator does a “preparation” file where he advances normally, and the real save, where he's limited. The setup file has him completing the prologue and initial starting area, and this Link gains full endurance and hearts. From this point, he starts a cutscene and halts midway through to instruct the game to open an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets confused and generates a third save file that merges the states of the original two.

This creates fresh problems, however. The fused file has a protagonist that did not acquired the ability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses easily, but pulling it off means depending on an unstable build of the title that fails to load certain areas. As with other obstacles, he has a technical solution for it: He begins the game on its early version 1.0, and then updates the software midway through to ensure it starts working properly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue version of the hero is programmed so that he cannot break any weapons he wields, presumably to avoid a situation where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the wear problem, as the character he transfers across universes is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a smart technique, but not a method that eradicates all potential friction. The stick is nonetheless a weak weapon that makes battles onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of grit and perseverance. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant supply of consumables to boost his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a bug that allows him to clip through the environment. Some would consider these methods reason to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his audience. He further uses a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll ban one fan from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

The streamer manages to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights look painful. The video version of his quest spares the viewer sit through the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them last several hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing 23 straight. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes Link's health as it unfolds, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable branch is after all only a stick. He can't necessarily duplicate objects midway the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, he manages to defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software forces the user to wield the Master Sword as the final attack, so technically, it's not quite completely a stick-only playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, the streamer banned more than a thousand people in his live stream. Rest in peace.