Twitch Star Spends 37 Straight Trying to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Stick

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have run out of creative self-imposed challenges that impose unique restrictions on a playthrough. However, although many players have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom using just a stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the player who endeavored to clear the game with a single branch—meaning, the exact same one throughout.

PointCrow is famous for such challenge runs, like the time he went through the title solely with explosives or the attempt where he aimed to defeat the game with no energy. A one-branch playthrough, though, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is especially important when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the entire world. But if the stick shatters, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The full story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So PointCrow does a “preparation” save where he advances normally, and the real file, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him completing the intro and initial starting area, and this Link acquires maximum endurance and health. From here, he starts a cinematic and pauses partway through to tell the game 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 creates new problems, however. The fused file has a protagonist that did not acquired the ability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the file exploit fixes readily, but executing it means depending on an buggy build of the title that fails to load some areas. As with everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He begins the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the game midway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue form of Link is programmed so that he cannot damage any tools he wields, likely to avoid a situation where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the durability issue, as the character he pulls between universes is the version from the start of the story. It's a smart trick, but not a method that eradicates all possible difficulty. The branch is still a ineffective item that renders battles onerous. But at that stage, it's all a matter of determination and dedication. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant number of consumables to boost his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He also makes use of a glitch that allows Link to clip through the world. A few would consider these methods grounds to question the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He also uses a safeguard of kinds stating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll ban one viewer from his live stream, creating an motivation to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

PointCrow succeeds to get through many of the game's bosses, but the battles look grueling. The video edit of his journey spares the viewer sit through the whole fights, which is a blessing when some of them last multiple long hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing twenty-three straight. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable branch is still only a stick. He can't always duplicate objects during the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he manages to defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the game forces the user to use the legendary weapon as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow removed over 1,000 users in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.