Twitch Personality Dedicates 37 Straight Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Stick

One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that impose unique rules on a playthrough. Yet, although many players have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom with just a stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the player who endeavored to beat the game with a single branch—meaning, the exact same one throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for such difficult playthroughs, like the instance he played the title solely with explosives or the attempt where he aimed to defeat the game with no stamina. A one-branch run, however, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces the hero to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly relevant when working with the most fragile weapon in the entire world. But if the stick breaks, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The full answer, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator creates a “setup” save where he advances standardly, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him going through the prologue and first starting area, and this character acquires maximum endurance and hearts. From here, he starts a cinematic and pauses partway through to tell the software to open an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and generates a third game file that combines the states of the first two files.

This causes new issues, however. The merged file has a Link that never acquired the capability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses readily, but executing it means depending on an buggy version of the title that fails to open certain areas. As with other obstacles, he has a technical solution for it: He starts the game on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the game midway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Curiously, the prologue form of Link is programmed so that he cannot damage any tools he uses, presumably to avoid a situation where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the wear problem, as the Link he transfers across universes is the one from the start of the game. It's a smart technique, but not one that eradicates all potential difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that makes encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of determination and perseverance. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an plentiful number of consumables to improve his strength, or stock up on healing spirits. He additionally employs a bug that allows him to phase through the environment. Some would find these means grounds to discredit the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He also uses a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll remove a fan from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

PointCrow manages to defeat several of the game's bosses, but the fights appear grueling. The video edit of his journey spares the viewer endure the whole conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them last multiple long hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible twenty-three straight. The final villain battle, which erases Link's health as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is still just a stick. He can't necessarily duplicate objects during the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, he manages to defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software compels the user to wield the legendary weapon as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer banned more than 1,000 people in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.