Streaming Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Stick

One could think that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that impose unique restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, although numerous gamers have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom with just a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the individual who aimed to beat the game with a single stick—specifically, the very same stick throughout.

The streamer is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the time he played the game solely with bombs or the effort where he aimed to beat the story with no energy. A one-branch playthrough, though, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is especially relevant when working with the most fragile tool in the entire world. But if the branch shatters, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The complete story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's save file system to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” save where he advances standardly, and the real file, where he's restricted. The setup file has him completing the prologue and first starting area, and this Link gains maximum endurance and hearts. From here, he triggers a cutscene and halts partway through to instruct the game to load an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets confused and creates a new save file that combines the conditions of the first two files.

That causes new issues, though. The merged file has a protagonist that never acquired the ability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch fixes readily, but executing it means relying on an buggy build of the title that refuses to load some locations. Like everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the game partway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory form of Link is coded so that he is unable to damage any tools he uses, likely to prevent a situation where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the wear problem, as the character he transfers between universes is the version from the beginning of the game. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eradicates all potential difficulty. The branch is still a weak item that renders battles tedious. But at that point, it's all a matter of determination and dedication. It also aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant number of items to improve his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a glitch that allows him to clip through the world. A few would consider these methods grounds to discredit the validity 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 also uses a penalty of sorts stating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll ban one viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

The streamer manages to get through many of the game's bosses, but the fights appear grueling. The video edit of his journey doesn't make the audience endure the whole fights, which is a good thing when some of them last several hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible 23 straight. The final villain battle, which erases the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is after all only a stick. He can't always clone objects midway the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow manages to overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the software forces the player to use the Master Sword as the last strike, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

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