Twitch Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: 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 creative self-imposed challenges that impose unique rules on a playthrough. Yet, while numerous players have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom using just a stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the player who endeavored to beat the adventure with a single branch—meaning, the very same one from start to finish.

The streamer is renowned for such challenge runs, like the time he went through the title using only explosives or the attempt where he aimed to defeat the game with no energy. A one-branch run, however, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is especially relevant when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the entire world. Yet if the branch breaks, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward explanation is exploits. The complete answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak the game's save file system to have distinct game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” save where he progresses normally, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The preparatory save has him going through the prologue and first tutorial island, and this Link acquires maximum stamina and hearts. From here, he triggers a cutscene and halts partway through to instruct the game to open an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets confused and generates a third save file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

That creates fresh issues, though. The fused file has a protagonist that never obtain the ability to access shrines. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch fixes easily, but executing it means relying on an buggy version of the game that fails to open some locations. As with other obstacles, he has a clever solution for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then updates the software midway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory version of the hero is coded so that he cannot damage any tools he uses, presumably to prevent a situation where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the wear issue, as the character he pulls across universes is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eradicates all potential friction. The branch is still a ineffective weapon that makes battles onerous. But at that point, it's all a matter of grit and perseverance. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an plentiful supply of consumables to improve his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a bug that enables him to clip through the world. Some would find these methods reason to discredit the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He further uses a safeguard of sorts stating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll remove one fan from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

The streamer manages to get through several of the game's bosses, but the battles look grueling. The YouTube version of his quest doesn't make the viewer endure the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when a few of them last several hours. One boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing twenty-three hours. The final villain battle, which erases the hero's health as it unfolds, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible stick is still only a piece of wood. He can't always clone items 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 user to wield the Master Sword as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a stick-only run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow banned more than a thousand people in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.