Streaming Personality Spends 37 Hours Attempting to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have run out of creative challenge runs that impose special rules on a playthrough. However, although numerous players have attempted to complete the game using just a stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the player who endeavored to clear the adventure with a one stick—specifically, the exact same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, like the time he went through the title using only explosives or the effort where he tried to defeat the game with zero energy. A one-branch playthrough, though, seems impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole weapon wear system, which is especially important when working with the weakest weapon in the whole world. But if the branch breaks, that's the end. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward answer is glitches. The full answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak the game's save file system to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So the creator does a “setup” file where he progresses normally, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The setup save has him going through the prologue and first starting area, and this Link gains full stamina and health. From this point, he starts a cutscene and halts midway through to instruct the game to open an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and generates a new save file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

This causes new problems, however. The merged file has a Link that did not obtain the capability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch addresses easily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy build of the title that refuses to load some locations. As with other obstacles, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the software midway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue version of Link is coded so that he cannot break any weapons he uses, presumably to avoid a scenario where the user gets trapped at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer bypasses the durability problem, as the Link he pulls between universes is the version from the start of the story. It's a smart technique, but not one that eliminates all possible friction. The branch is nonetheless a ineffective item that renders encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of grit and perseverance. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful number of items to boost his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a bug that allows Link to phase through the environment. Some would find these methods reason to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He further implements a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll ban a fan from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

PointCrow manages to defeat several of the game's bosses, but the fights look grueling. The video edit of his quest spares the audience endure the whole conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them last multiple hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible 23 hours. The final villain battle, which depletes the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The indestructible stick is after all only a stick. He can't necessarily duplicate objects during the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he manages to overcome the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game compels the user to wield the legendary weapon as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed more than a thousand users in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.