Streaming Star Dedicates Thirty-Seven Straight 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 The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have run out of creative challenge runs that impose special restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, while numerous players have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom using only a stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the individual who aimed to beat the game with a one branch—specifically, the very same stick throughout.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the instance he played the game solely with explosives or the effort where he aimed to defeat the story with no stamina. A one-branch run, however, seems impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole weapon wear system, which is particularly relevant when working with the most fragile weapon in the entire world. Yet if the branch breaks, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple explanation is exploits. The full answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So the creator creates a “setup” save where he progresses standardly, and the real file, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him going through the intro and first starting area, and this Link gains full endurance and health. From here, he triggers a cinematic and halts partway through to instruct the software to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets confused and generates a new game file that merges the states of the first two files.

That causes new problems, though. The merged file has a protagonist that never acquired the capability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes readily, but executing it means relying on an buggy build of the game that refuses to load some areas. Like other obstacles, he has a technical workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the game midway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the introductory version of the hero is programmed so that he cannot break any weapons he wields, likely to avoid a situation where the player gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer bypasses the wear issue, as the character he transfers between dimensions is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eliminates all possible difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective item that makes encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of determination and dedication. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful number of items to boost his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a glitch that allows him to clip through the environment. Some would consider these methods grounds to discredit the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive player who is ready to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He also implements a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll ban a viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to get through many of the game's main enemies, but the battles look grueling. The YouTube version of his journey doesn't make the audience sit through the entire conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them take multiple long hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible twenty-three straight. The Ganondorf battle, which erases Link's health as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is still just a stick. He can't always duplicate objects midway the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, he manages to defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the software forces the user to wield the legendary weapon as the final strike, so technically, it's not quite completely a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow removed more than 1,000 people in his live stream. Rest in peace.