Twitch Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Attempting to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Stick

You might assume that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have run out of creative self-imposed challenges that impose unique restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, although numerous players have attempted to complete the game with only a stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the player who endeavored to beat the adventure with a one branch—specifically, the exact same one throughout.

The streamer is famous for such difficult playthroughs, like the time he played the game using only explosives or the effort where he aimed to defeat the story with zero stamina. A one-branch run, however, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole durability system, which is especially relevant when working with the weakest weapon in the entire world. Yet if the branch shatters, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The simple explanation is exploits. The complete answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have distinct game sessions that affect one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” file where he advances standardly, and the actual save, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him completing the intro and initial tutorial island, and this Link gains maximum stamina and health. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and pauses partway through to instruct the game to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The system gets mixed up and creates a new game file that merges the conditions of the original two.

That creates new problems, though. The merged save file has a protagonist that did not acquired the capability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit fixes readily, but pulling it off means depending on an unstable version of the title that refuses to open some locations. Like other obstacles, he has a clever solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the game partway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue version of the hero is programmed so that he cannot break any weapons he uses, likely to avoid a scenario where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the durability issue, as the Link he pulls across universes is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eliminates all potential difficulty. The branch is still a weak weapon that makes encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of grit and perseverance. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that gives him an plentiful number of consumables to boost his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally employs a bug that allows Link to clip through the environment. A few would consider these means grounds to discredit the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He also implements a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll remove one viewer from his live stream, creating an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights appear grueling. The video version of his quest doesn't make the audience endure the entire fights, which is a blessing when a few of them last multiple hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing 23 hours. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes the hero's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is after all only a stick. He is unable to always duplicate items midway the fight.

So, is it possible? Technically, he does overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the software forces the user to wield the Master Sword as the last strike, so technically, it's not completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow banned over 1,000 people in his live stream. RIP.