Streaming Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative challenge runs that apply special rules on a playthrough. However, although many gamers have tried to finish the game using just a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the player who aimed to clear the adventure with a one branch—specifically, the exact same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the time he went through the title solely with bombs or the effort where he tried to defeat the story with zero stamina. A single stick playthrough, however, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is particularly important when working with the most fragile weapon in the whole game. Yet if the branch breaks, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The straightforward explanation is exploits. The full answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator does a “setup” file where he advances normally, and the real file, where he's limited. The preparatory file has him completing the prologue and first starting area, and this character acquires maximum endurance and health. From this point, he starts a cutscene and pauses partway through to tell the game to open an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and generates a third save file that combines the conditions of the original two.

This causes fresh issues, though. The fused save file has a Link that never acquired the ability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes readily, but executing it means relying on an unstable build of the game that fails to load certain areas. Like other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins the game on its early version 1.0, and then patches the game partway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the introductory version of Link is coded so that he cannot break any weapons he wields, presumably to prevent a scenario where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the wear problem, as the character he transfers across dimensions is the version from the beginning of the game. It's a clever trick, but not one that eradicates all potential friction. The branch is still a ineffective weapon that makes battles tedious. But at that point, it's all a matter of grit and perseverance. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant number of consumables to boost his strength, or stock up on healing spirits. He also employs a glitch that enables Link to phase through the world. Some would consider these means reason to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his audience. He also implements a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll ban one fan from his live stream, establishing an motivation to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

The streamer manages to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights look painful. The YouTube edit of his journey doesn't make the viewer sit through the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when a few of them last multiple hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing twenty-three straight. The Ganondorf battle, which erases the hero's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is after all only a stick. He is unable to necessarily clone items during the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he manages to overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the software compels the user to wield the legendary weapon as the last strike, so strictly speaking, it's not completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed over a thousand users in his Twitch chat. RIP.