Twitch Personality Dedicates 37 Straight Attempting to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that impose unique rules on a gameplay session. Yet, although numerous players have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom with only a stick, content creator PointCrow stands out as the player who aimed to beat the adventure with a single branch—specifically, the exact same stick throughout.

The streamer is famous for such challenge runs, such as the time he played the game solely with explosives or the effort where he aimed to beat the story with zero energy. A single stick playthrough, though, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires Link to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly important when dealing with the most fragile tool in the whole game. Yet if the stick breaks, that's the end. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The simple answer is glitches. The complete answer, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak the game's save file system to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So the creator creates a “setup” save where he advances standardly, and the actual file, where he's restricted. The preparatory save has him going through the intro and first tutorial island, and this character acquires maximum endurance and hearts. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and halts partway through to tell the software to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The system gets confused and creates a third game file that combines the conditions of the original two.

That creates fresh issues, however. The merged file has a protagonist that did not obtain the ability to access shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses readily, but executing it means relying on an buggy build of the game that fails to load certain areas. As with everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the software midway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue form of Link is coded so that he is unable to break any weapons he wields, likely to prevent a situation where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the wear problem, as the character he pulls between dimensions is the one from the start of the story. It's a clever trick, but not one that eradicates all potential friction. The branch is nonetheless a weak weapon that renders battles tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a question of grit and perseverance. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant number of consumables to boost his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He also employs a bug that enables him to clip through the world. Some would consider these methods grounds to question the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He further implements a penalty of kinds stating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll ban one viewer from his live stream, creating an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

PointCrow manages to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles appear painful. The YouTube edit of his quest spares the audience sit through the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them last multiple hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible twenty-three straight. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes Link's health as it unfolds, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible stick is still only a stick. He is unable to necessarily clone objects during the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow does overcome the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software forces the player to use the Master Sword as the last strike, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

In the end, the streamer removed more than 1,000 people in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.