Streaming Star Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Attempting to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: 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, fans would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that impose unique restrictions on a gameplay session. However, although numerous players have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom using only a stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the individual who aimed to clear the game with a one branch—meaning, the very same stick throughout.
PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the time he went through the title using only explosives or the attempt where he tried to beat the story with no stamina. A single stick playthrough, however, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is particularly relevant when working with the most fragile tool in the whole game. But if the stick breaks, that's it. It's over.
The Method Behind the Madness
How did he do it? The simple answer is exploits. The complete answer, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator does a “preparation” save where he progresses normally, and the real save, where he's limited. The setup save has him going through the intro and first starting area, and this Link acquires maximum stamina and health. From here, he triggers a cutscene and halts partway through to tell the game to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets confused and creates a third game file that merges the states of the original two.
That creates new issues, though. The fused file has a Link that did not acquired the capability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue 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. As with other obstacles, he has a technical workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the software partway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.
Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges
Curiously, the introductory version of Link is coded so that he cannot break any weapons he wields, presumably to avoid a scenario where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the durability problem, as the Link he transfers across universes is the one from the start of the story. It's a smart technique, but not one that eliminates all possible friction. The branch is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that renders encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's all a question of grit and perseverance. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant number of consumables to boost his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He also makes use of a bug that allows him to phase through the environment. A few would consider these methods reason to discredit the validity of the run, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He further implements a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll remove one viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to not depend too much on them.
Major Battles and the Last Encounter
The streamer manages to get through many of the game's bosses, but the fights appear painful. The video edit of his quest doesn't make the viewer endure the whole fights, which is a good thing when a few of them last multiple long hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible twenty-three hours. The final villain battle, which erases Link's health as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is after all only a stick. He can't necessarily clone items during the fight.
Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to overcome the beast form of the antagonist. But the game forces the player to use the legendary weapon as the last strike, so technically, it's not completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?
When everything is said and done, PointCrow banned more than 1,000 users in his Twitch chat. RIP.
