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

You might assume that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have run out of creative self-imposed challenges that apply unique restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, while many gamers have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom using just a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the individual who endeavored to beat the game with a one branch—specifically, the exact same stick from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for such difficult playthroughs, like the time he went through the title using only explosives or the attempt where he aimed to beat the story with zero energy. A one-branch run, however, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the most fragile tool in the entire world. Yet if the stick breaks, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is glitches. The full answer, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” save where he progresses standardly, and the real save, where he's limited. The preparatory file has him completing the intro and first tutorial island, and this character acquires maximum endurance and hearts. From here, he starts a cutscene and pauses midway through to tell the software to open an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and creates a third save file that merges the states of the first two files.

This causes new problems, however. The merged save file has a Link that never acquired the ability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses easily, but executing it means depending on an buggy version of the title that fails to load certain locations. As with other obstacles, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the software midway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Challenges

Curiously, the introductory version of Link is coded so that he cannot damage any weapons he wields, likely to avoid a situation where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's also how the streamer gets around the durability problem, as the Link he pulls across universes is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eradicates all potential friction. The stick is nonetheless a weak weapon that makes encounters onerous. But at that point, it's all a question of determination and dedication. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant number of items to boost his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also makes use of a bug that allows Link to phase through the environment. A few would find these means reason to question the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to entertain his audience. He also implements a safeguard of sorts stating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll ban a fan from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

PointCrow manages to defeat many of the game's bosses, but the fights appear grueling. The video version of his journey doesn't make the viewer sit through the whole conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them take multiple hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing twenty-three straight. The final villain battle, which depletes the hero's health as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is still just a piece of wood. He can't always clone objects midway the battle.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the game forces the user to wield the legendary weapon as the last strike, so technically, it's not completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

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