Twitch Star Dedicates Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One 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 novel self-imposed challenges that apply special restrictions on a gameplay session. However, although numerous players have tried to finish the game using only a stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the individual who endeavored to beat the adventure with a single branch—specifically, the exact same one throughout.

PointCrow is famous for such difficult playthroughs, such as the time he played the title solely with bombs or the effort where he aimed to beat the game with zero energy. A single stick playthrough, however, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is especially relevant when dealing with the most fragile tool in the entire world. Yet if the stick shatters, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The full story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate the game's save file system to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So PointCrow does a “setup” save where he advances normally, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The preparatory save has him going through the intro and initial starting area, and this character gains full endurance and health. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and pauses partway through to instruct the game to open an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and generates a third save file that merges the states of the original two.

This causes fresh issues, however. The merged file has a Link that never obtain the capability to access shrines. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit addresses easily, but executing it means depending on an buggy build of the game that fails to open some locations. As with other obstacles, he has a technical solution for it: He begins the game on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the software midway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue version of Link is coded so that he cannot damage any weapons he wields, likely to avoid a scenario where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the durability issue, as the character he transfers across dimensions is the one from the start of the story. It's a smart technique, but not a method that eliminates all potential difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a weak weapon that makes battles tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a question of determination and perseverance. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant supply of consumables to improve his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a bug that enables Link to phase through the world. Some would find these means grounds to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his audience. He further uses a safeguard of kinds stipulating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll remove a fan from his live stream, creating an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

PointCrow manages to get through many of the game's bosses, but the fights look grueling. The YouTube edit of his journey spares the audience endure the whole fights, which is a blessing when some of them take multiple long hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an incredible twenty-three hours. The final villain showdown, which erases the hero's health as it unfolds, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is after all only a piece of wood. He can't necessarily duplicate objects during the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the software forces the player to wield the legendary weapon as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not completely a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

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