Streaming Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Hours Attempting to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Stick

One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that apply unique rules on a playthrough. Yet, although many players have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom with just a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the individual who aimed to clear the game with a one stick—specifically, the exact same stick throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the time he played the game solely with bombs or the effort where he aimed to beat the story with zero energy. A one-branch playthrough, however, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires Link to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is especially relevant when dealing with the weakest tool in the whole world. But if the branch shatters, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The complete story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” save where he progresses normally, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him completing the prologue and first starting area, and this character gains maximum stamina and hearts. From this point, he starts a cinematic and halts midway through to tell the game to open an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets confused and creates a new save file that merges the states of the first two files.

That creates new issues, however. The merged save file has a protagonist that did not acquired the ability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes readily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy version of the title that fails to open certain locations. As with everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then updates the game midway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the introductory form of Link is programmed so that he cannot break any weapons he wields, presumably to prevent a situation where the user gets trapped at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the wear problem, as the Link he transfers across dimensions is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a smart technique, but not a method that eradicates all possible friction. The stick is still a ineffective weapon that renders encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's all a question of grit and perseverance. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful number of consumables to improve his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a glitch that enables him to phase through the environment. A few would consider these means reason to discredit the legitimacy of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He further uses a safeguard of sorts stating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll remove one viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

PointCrow manages to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles look painful. The video edit of his journey doesn't make the viewer endure the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when a few of them last several hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases Link's health as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The indestructible stick is after all only a piece of wood. He can't necessarily duplicate objects midway the battle.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the game forces the player to wield the legendary weapon as the last strike, so technically, it's not fully a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow removed more than a thousand users in his live stream. RIP.