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

One could think that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel challenge runs that apply unique rules on a playthrough. Yet, while numerous players have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom with only a stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the individual who endeavored to clear the game with a single branch—meaning, the very same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for such difficult playthroughs, such as the time he went through the title using only explosives or the attempt where he aimed to beat the story with no energy. A one-branch run, however, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which requires Link to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire durability system, which is particularly important when working with the weakest tool in the entire world. Yet if the stick shatters, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward answer is exploits. The full answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate the game'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 prologue and first tutorial island, and this Link acquires full endurance and hearts. From here, he starts a cinematic and pauses partway through to tell the game to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets mixed up and generates a third save file that combines the states of the first two files.

That causes new issues, however. The merged save file has a Link that never obtain the ability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch addresses readily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy version of the game that fails to open some locations. As with other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins the game on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then updates the software midway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the prologue form of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to damage any tools he wields, likely to avoid a situation where the user gets trapped at the start of the adventure. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the durability problem, as the character he pulls between dimensions is the version from the beginning of the game. It's a smart trick, but not one that eliminates all possible difficulty. The stick is still a weak item that makes encounters tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of determination and perseverance. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant supply of consumables to boost his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a bug that allows him to clip through the world. Some would find these methods reason to discredit the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He further implements a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll remove one fan from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

PointCrow manages to get through several of the game's bosses, but the battles look painful. The YouTube version of his quest spares the audience sit through the entire fights, which is a good thing when a few of them take multiple hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes the hero's health as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is still just a piece of wood. He can't always duplicate items during the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, he manages to overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the software compels the user to use the legendary weapon as the last strike, so strictly speaking, it's not completely a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow banned more than a thousand users in his live stream. RIP.