Twitch Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Attempting to Conquer <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, fans would have run out of creative self-imposed challenges that impose unique restrictions on a playthrough. However, while numerous gamers have attempted to finish the game with just a wooden stick, streamer the streamer stands out as the player who aimed to beat the game with a one branch—specifically, the very same one throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for such difficult playthroughs, like the time he played the title using only explosives or the effort where he tried to beat the game with zero energy. A single stick playthrough, however, seems impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is especially relevant when working with the weakest weapon in the entire world. Yet if the stick breaks, that's the end. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The complete answer, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can manipulate the game's save file system to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” save where he progresses standardly, and the real save, where he's limited. The setup file has him going through the prologue and first tutorial island, and this Link acquires full endurance and hearts. From here, he starts a cutscene and pauses partway through to tell the game to load an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and creates a third save file that merges the states of the first two files.

This causes new issues, though. The merged save file has a protagonist that never acquired the ability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses easily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy build of the title that refuses to open some areas. Like everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He begins the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the software partway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue version of Link is programmed so that he cannot damage any weapons he uses, likely to avoid a scenario where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the wear issue, as the character he pulls across universes is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a smart technique, but not one that eradicates all possible friction. The branch is still a ineffective item that makes encounters onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of determination and dedication. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant supply of items to improve his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also employs a glitch that enables him to phase through the world. Some would find these means reason to discredit the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his audience. He also implements a penalty of kinds stating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll ban a fan from his live stream, establishing an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

PointCrow manages to get through many of the game's bosses, but the fights appear painful. The YouTube edit of his journey doesn't make the audience endure the entire fights, which is a good thing when some of them take several long hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing 23 straight. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes Link's hearts as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable branch is after all only a stick. He is unable to necessarily clone objects during the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he does defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the software forces the player to wield the legendary weapon as the last strike, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, the streamer removed over a thousand users in his live stream. RIP.