Twitch Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Stick

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that impose special rules on a playthrough. However, although many gamers have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom using just a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the individual who endeavored to clear the adventure with a one branch—meaning, the exact same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for such difficult playthroughs, such as the instance he played the title solely with bombs or the effort where he aimed to beat the story with no energy. A single stick run, though, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires the hero to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is especially relevant when working with the most fragile weapon in the entire world. Yet if the stick breaks, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple explanation is exploits. The complete answer, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So PointCrow does a “setup” save where he progresses standardly, and the actual save, where he's limited. The preparatory file has him completing the intro and first starting area, and this character acquires full stamina and hearts. From here, he starts a cutscene and pauses midway through to instruct the game to open an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and generates a third save file that combines the states of the first two files.

This causes new problems, however. The merged save file has a Link that did not acquired the ability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses easily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy version of the title that refuses to open certain locations. Like everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He begins the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then updates the game midway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory form of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to break any tools he uses, presumably to avoid a scenario where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the wear issue, as the Link he transfers between universes is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a smart trick, but not one that eliminates all possible difficulty. The branch is still a weak weapon that makes encounters onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of grit and perseverance. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful number of items to boost his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a glitch that allows Link to clip through the environment. A few would find these methods reason to discredit the legitimacy of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful player who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He further uses a penalty of sorts stating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll remove a fan from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

PointCrow manages to defeat several of the game's bosses, but the fights look grueling. The YouTube edit of his quest spares the viewer sit through the whole fights, which is a good thing when some of them last multiple long hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an incredible twenty-three straight. The final villain showdown, which depletes the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is after all just a piece of wood. He is unable to always duplicate objects during the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does overcome the beast form of the antagonist. But the game compels the user to use the Master Sword as the final strike, so technically, it's not fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow banned more than 1,000 users in his Twitch chat. RIP.