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

One could think that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that impose special restrictions on a gameplay session. However, although many gamers have tried to finish the game with just a wooden stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the individual who aimed to clear the game with a single stick—specifically, the exact same stick from start to finish.

The streamer is renowned for such challenge runs, such as the time he went through the title solely with bombs or the effort where he tried to beat the story with no energy. A single stick playthrough, however, sounds impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole weapon wear system, which is especially important when dealing with the weakest weapon in the entire world. But if the branch breaks, that's the end. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The simple answer is glitches. The complete answer, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” save where he progresses normally, and the real save, where he's limited. The preparatory file has him completing the prologue and first tutorial island, and this character acquires full stamina and health. From here, he starts a cinematic and pauses midway through to tell the game to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets mixed up and creates a third game file that merges the states of the first two files.

This creates fresh issues, however. The merged file has a protagonist that did not obtain the ability to access shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses readily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy build of the title that refuses to open some areas. Like other obstacles, he has a clever solution for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then updates the software midway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Curiously, the introductory form of Link is coded so that he is unable to damage any weapons he uses, likely to avoid a scenario where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the wear 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 nonetheless a ineffective weapon that renders encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's all a question of determination and dedication. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful supply of items to improve his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a glitch that enables Link to clip through the environment. A few would consider these methods reason to question the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He also uses a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll ban a viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights appear painful. The YouTube edit of his quest spares the viewer sit through the entire fights, which is a blessing when some of them take multiple long hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing 23 straight. The Ganondorf battle, which erases the hero's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is still just a stick. He can't always clone objects midway the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software compels the player to wield the Master Sword as the final attack, so technically, it's not fully a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer banned more than a thousand people in his live stream. Rest in peace.