Twitch Personality Spends 37 Hours Attempting to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Stick

One could think that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of novel challenge runs that impose unique restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, while many gamers have tried to complete the game with only a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the individual who aimed to clear the adventure with a single branch—meaning, the exact same stick throughout.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the time he went through the title using only explosives or the effort where he aimed to defeat the game with no energy. A one-branch playthrough, though, seems impossible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires the hero to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is especially relevant when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the entire world. But if the stick shatters, that's the end. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple answer is glitches. The complete story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” file where he progresses standardly, and the actual file, where he's limited. The setup save has him going through the intro and first starting area, and this character acquires maximum stamina and health. From here, he triggers a cutscene and halts midway through to tell the game to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and generates a new game file that merges the states of the first two files.

That creates fresh problems, however. The merged file has a protagonist that never obtain the capability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch fixes easily, but executing it means relying on an buggy build of the title that refuses to open certain locations. As with other obstacles, he has a technical workaround for it: He begins the game on its early version 1.0, and then updates the software midway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory version of Link is coded so that he is unable to damage any weapons he uses, presumably to avoid a situation where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer bypasses the wear issue, as the Link he pulls between universes is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a clever trick, but not one that eradicates all possible friction. The stick is still a ineffective weapon that renders encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of determination and dedication. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful number of items to boost his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a glitch that allows him to phase through the world. A few would consider these means reason to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful player who is ready to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He also implements a penalty of kinds stating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll remove one fan from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles appear painful. The video version of his journey doesn't make the audience endure the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them last multiple hours. One boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an incredible twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf battle, which erases Link's health as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is after all only a stick. He is unable to necessarily duplicate objects midway the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow manages to defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game forces the user to wield the Master Sword as the final strike, so technically, it's not fully a stick-only run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer banned over 1,000 people in his live stream. Rest in peace.