Twitch Personality Spends 37 Hours Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that impose special restrictions on a gameplay session. However, while numerous gamers have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom using just a stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the individual who aimed to clear the game with a one branch—specifically, the exact same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for such challenge runs, like the instance he went through the game using only explosives or the attempt where he aimed to beat the story with zero stamina. A one-branch playthrough, however, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the entire durability system, which is especially relevant when dealing with the weakest tool in the whole game. But if the branch breaks, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The simple answer is glitches. The complete story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that affect one another. So the creator does a “setup” file where he progresses normally, and the real save, where he's restricted. The preparatory save has him going through the prologue and first starting area, and this Link acquires maximum endurance and hearts. From here, he triggers a cinematic and pauses partway through to instruct the game to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The system gets mixed up and generates a third save file that combines the conditions of the first two files.

This causes fresh problems, though. The fused save file has a protagonist that did not acquired the ability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses readily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy build of the title that refuses to open some locations. As with other obstacles, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the game midway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Curiously, the introductory form of the hero is coded so that he cannot break any weapons he wields, likely to prevent a situation where the player gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the wear issue, as the character he transfers between dimensions is the one from the start of the game. It's a smart technique, but not one that eliminates all potential friction. The branch is nonetheless a weak item that renders battles onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of grit and perseverance. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an plentiful number of consumables to improve his attack, or stock up on healing spirits. He additionally employs a bug that enables Link to clip through the world. Some would find these methods grounds to discredit the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his audience. He also implements a safeguard of kinds stating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll ban one fan from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

The streamer manages to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles look painful. The YouTube version of his journey doesn't make the audience sit through the entire fights, which is a blessing when some of them take multiple long hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing 23 straight. The final villain showdown, which erases the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable branch is still just a stick. He can't always clone objects midway the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he manages to overcome the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game forces the player to use the Master Sword as the final attack, so technically, it's not quite fully a stick-only playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow removed over a thousand users in his live stream. Rest in peace.