Twitch Personality Spends 37 Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Branch

One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have run out of novel self-imposed challenges that impose special rules on a gameplay session. However, although many gamers have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom using just a stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the individual who aimed to beat the game with a single branch—meaning, the exact same one throughout.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the time he played the title solely with explosives or the effort where he tried to beat the game with no energy. A single stick playthrough, though, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which forces the hero to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is especially relevant when dealing with the weakest tool in the entire game. But if the stick breaks, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple explanation 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 PointCrow creates a “preparation” file where he progresses normally, and the real save, where he's restricted. The preparatory save has him completing the intro and initial tutorial island, and this Link gains maximum stamina and health. From here, he triggers a cinematic and halts midway through to tell the game to load an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and generates a new save file that merges the conditions of the original two.

This creates fresh problems, however. The merged save file has a protagonist that never acquired the capability to access shrines. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch addresses readily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy build of the game that fails to open some locations. Like other obstacles, he has a technical solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then patches the software midway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Durability and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue form of the hero is coded so that he cannot break any weapons he wields, presumably to prevent a situation where the player gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the wear issue, as the character he pulls between dimensions is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a smart trick, but not one that eradicates all potential difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that renders battles onerous. But at that stage, it's all a matter of grit and perseverance. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that gives him an plentiful supply of items to boost his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a bug that allows Link to clip through the environment. A few would consider these methods grounds to question the legitimacy of the run, 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 safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll remove a fan from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

PointCrow succeeds to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights look painful. The video version of his quest doesn't make the audience endure the whole conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them take multiple hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an incredible twenty-three straight. The Ganondorf battle, which erases Link's health as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The indestructible branch is still just a piece of wood. He can't always clone objects midway the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the game compels the player to use the legendary weapon as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow banned over a thousand people in his live stream. RIP.