Streaming Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Stick

One could think that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have run out of creative challenge runs that impose special rules on a playthrough. However, although numerous players have attempted to finish the game using just a stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the individual who endeavored to beat the game with a single branch—specifically, the very same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, like the instance he went through the title using only explosives or the effort where he tried to defeat the game with zero energy. A one-branch run, though, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is especially important when dealing with the weakest weapon in the entire game. Yet if the stick shatters, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple answer is glitches. The complete story, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator creates a “setup” save where he progresses standardly, and the real file, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him going through the intro and initial tutorial island, and this character acquires full endurance and health. From this point, he starts a cutscene and pauses partway through to instruct the game to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets mixed up and generates a third save file that combines the states of the first two files.

That causes fresh issues, though. The merged save file has a protagonist that did not acquired the ability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes readily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy version of the game that fails to load some locations. As with everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He begins the game on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the software midway through to ensure it starts working properly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue form of the hero is programmed so that he cannot break any tools he wields, presumably to avoid a scenario where the user gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer bypasses the wear problem, as the character he pulls between universes is the version from the start of the game. It's a smart trick, but not one that eliminates all potential difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective item that makes encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's all 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 makes use of a bug that enables him to phase through the environment. A few would consider these means reason to discredit the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive player who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his audience. He further uses a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll remove a fan from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

PointCrow manages to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles look grueling. The video edit of his quest doesn't make the audience sit through the whole fights, which is a blessing when some of them take several long hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing 23 straight. The final villain showdown, which erases Link's health as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is after all just a piece of wood. He can't necessarily clone items midway the fight.

So, is it possible? Technically, he manages to overcome the beast form of the antagonist. But the software forces the player to wield the legendary weapon as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

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