Streaming Personality Spends 37 Straight Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Stick

One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of novel challenge runs that impose special rules on a gameplay session. However, although many gamers have attempted to complete the game with just a stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the player who endeavored to clear the adventure with a one branch—meaning, the very same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the instance he went through the game solely with bombs or the effort where he tried to defeat the game with no stamina. A single stick playthrough, however, seems unfeasible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces the hero to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly relevant when working with the weakest weapon in the entire world. But if the stick breaks, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The simple answer is glitches. The full answer, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” file where he progresses standardly, and the actual save, where he's limited. The setup save has him going through the prologue and first tutorial island, and this Link acquires maximum endurance and hearts. From here, he triggers a cinematic and halts partway through to tell the game to open an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets confused and creates a third save file that combines the states of the original two.

That creates new issues, though. The merged save file has a protagonist that did not acquired the ability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses easily, but executing it means relying on an unstable build of the title that fails to load some locations. Like everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the game midway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue form of the hero is coded so that he cannot break any weapons he wields, presumably to avoid a situation where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the durability problem, as the character he pulls between dimensions is the version from the start of the game. It's a clever technique, but not one that eradicates all possible friction. The branch is nonetheless a ineffective item that renders encounters onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a question of grit and perseverance. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant supply of items to boost his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He also employs a glitch that allows Link to phase through the world. A few would find these means reason to discredit the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive player who is ready to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He also uses a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll ban a fan from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

PointCrow manages to get through many of the game's bosses, but the fights appear painful. The YouTube version of his quest doesn't make the audience sit through the entire fights, which is a good thing when a few of them last several long hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible 23 straight. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes Link's health as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible branch is still only a stick. He is unable to always clone objects during the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software compels the player to use the Master Sword as the final strike, so technically, it's not completely a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow removed over a thousand people in his live stream. Rest in peace.