Twitch Star Dedicates Thirty-Seven Hours Attempting to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Stick

You might assume that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted creative challenge runs that impose unique restrictions on a playthrough. However, although numerous gamers have attempted to complete the game using just a stick, content creator PointCrow stands out as the individual who endeavored to beat the adventure with a single branch—meaning, the exact same stick throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the time he played the game using only bombs or the attempt where he tried to beat the story with zero stamina. A single stick playthrough, however, sounds impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is especially relevant when dealing with the weakest weapon in the entire world. But if the stick shatters, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The full story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak the game's save file system to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So PointCrow does a “setup” file where he progresses normally, and the real file, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him going through the intro and initial tutorial island, and this character gains maximum endurance and hearts. From here, he starts a cinematic and pauses midway through to tell the software to load an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets confused and creates a new game file that combines the states of the original two.

This causes fresh problems, however. The merged file has a Link that did not acquired the capability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch addresses easily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy build of the game that fails to load some areas. Like other obstacles, he has a technical solution for it: He begins the game on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the software partway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue version of the hero is coded so that he cannot break any tools he wields, likely to avoid a situation where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer bypasses the durability problem, as the character he pulls between universes is the one from the start of the story. It's a clever trick, but not one that eliminates all potential difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a weak item that makes encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of grit and perseverance. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant supply of items to improve his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a bug that enables him to clip through the environment. A few would consider these means reason to discredit the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive player who is ready to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He also implements a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll remove one fan from his live stream, establishing an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to get through many of the game's bosses, but the fights appear grueling. The video edit of his quest spares the audience sit through the entire fights, which is a blessing when a few of them last several long hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an incredible twenty-three hours. The final villain showdown, which erases the hero's health as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is after all only a piece of wood. He can't always duplicate items midway the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he does overcome the beast form of the antagonist. But the software compels the user to wield the legendary weapon as the last strike, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

In the end, the streamer removed over 1,000 users in his live stream. RIP.