Twitch Personality Dedicates 37 Hours Trying to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Stick

One could think that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of creative self-imposed challenges that impose special rules on a playthrough. Yet, while numerous players have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom with just a stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the player who endeavored to clear the game with a one stick—specifically, the very same stick throughout.

PointCrow is famous for such difficult playthroughs, like the time he went through the title solely with explosives or the effort where he aimed to defeat the story with zero energy. A one-branch playthrough, however, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is particularly important when working with the most fragile weapon in the whole game. Yet if the branch breaks, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward answer is glitches. The full answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So the creator creates a “setup” file where he progresses standardly, and the real save, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him going through the prologue and initial starting area, and this Link acquires maximum stamina and hearts. From this point, he starts a cutscene and halts midway through to tell the software to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets confused and creates a third save file that combines the conditions of the first two files.

This causes fresh problems, however. The merged file has a Link that never acquired the ability to access shrines. 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. 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 updates the game midway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Challenges

Curiously, the introductory form of the hero is coded so that he cannot break any tools he uses, likely to prevent a situation where the player gets trapped at the start of the adventure. But that's also how the streamer gets around the durability problem, as the character he pulls across dimensions is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eradicates all possible difficulty. The branch is still a weak item that makes encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of determination and dedication. It also aids that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful number of items to improve his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He also makes use of a bug that enables him to clip through the environment. A few would find these means grounds to question the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful player who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He further implements a safeguard of kinds stipulating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll remove one viewer from his live stream, creating an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

The streamer manages to get through several of the game's bosses, but the fights look grueling. The video edit of his journey spares the audience endure the entire fights, which is a good thing when a few of them last multiple hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing 23 straight. The final villain showdown, which erases the hero's health as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is after all only a piece of wood. He is unable to necessarily duplicate objects midway the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow manages to overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the game forces the player to wield the Master Sword as the last strike, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow removed over a thousand people in his Twitch chat. RIP.