Twitch Personality Dedicates 37 Straight Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Stick

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have run out of novel challenge runs that impose unique rules on a playthrough. However, while many players have tried to finish the game using just a stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the player who aimed to clear the adventure with a one branch—specifically, the very same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for such challenge runs, like the instance he went through the title solely with explosives or the attempt where he aimed to defeat the story with zero stamina. A one-branch playthrough, however, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which requires Link to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire durability system, which is particularly relevant when working with the weakest tool in the entire world. But if the stick breaks, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is exploits. The complete story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So PointCrow does a “preparation” save where he progresses standardly, and the real save, where he's limited. The preparatory file has him completing the prologue and initial tutorial island, and this Link gains full endurance and hearts. From this point, he starts a cutscene and halts midway through to tell the game to load an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and creates a new save file that merges the states of the first two files.

This creates new issues, however. The fused save file has a protagonist that never obtain the ability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes readily, but pulling it off means depending on an unstable build of the title that refuses to load some locations. As with everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then patches the game partway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue form of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to break any tools he uses, presumably to prevent a scenario where the player gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the wear issue, as the Link he pulls between universes is the version from the start of the game. It's a smart trick, but not a method that eliminates all possible difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a ineffective item that makes encounters onerous. But at that point, it's all a matter of determination and dedication. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an plentiful number of items to boost his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a bug that allows him to phase through the environment. A few would consider these means grounds to discredit the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He also uses a safeguard of kinds stating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll remove a viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

The streamer manages to get through several of the game's bosses, but the battles look grueling. The video edit of his quest doesn't make the audience endure the entire conflicts, which is a good thing when a few of them last multiple long hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible twenty-three straight. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes Link's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible branch is still only a piece of wood. He can't necessarily clone items during the battle.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the software forces the user to wield the Master Sword as the final attack, so technically, it's not completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

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