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

One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that impose unique restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, although many players have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom with only a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the player who aimed to beat the game with a single stick—meaning, the exact same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for such difficult playthroughs, like the instance he went through the game 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 Link to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is especially relevant when working with the weakest weapon in the entire game. But if the stick shatters, that's the end. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is exploits. The full answer, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can tweak the game's save file system to have distinct game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow does a “setup” save where he progresses standardly, and the actual file, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him going through the prologue and initial tutorial island, and this character gains full stamina and hearts. From this point, he starts a cinematic and halts midway through to tell the game to load an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and generates a new save file that combines the states of the first two files.

This causes fresh issues, though. The merged file has a Link that never obtain the ability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes easily, but executing it means relying on an unstable build of the title that fails to open some locations. As with everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He starts the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then updates the software partway through to ensure it starts working properly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Challenges

Curiously, the introductory form of Link is coded so that he cannot break any tools he uses, likely to prevent a scenario where the user gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the durability problem, as the character he pulls across dimensions is the one from the start of the game. It's a smart technique, but not one that eliminates all potential difficulty. The branch is still a weak item that makes encounters tedious. But at that point, it's all a matter of grit and perseverance. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant supply of consumables to improve his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He also makes use of a glitch that enables him to clip through the world. Some would find these methods grounds to question the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his audience. He further implements a safeguard of kinds stating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll remove a viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles look grueling. The video edit of his journey doesn't make the audience sit through the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when a few of them take several long hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing twenty-three straight. The Ganondorf battle, which erases the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is after all just a stick. He is unable to always clone items during the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow does defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software compels the user to wield the legendary weapon as the final attack, so technically, it's not completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow removed more than 1,000 people in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.