Streaming Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that impose unique restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, although many players have tried to finish the game using only a wooden stick, streamer the streamer stands out as the player who aimed to clear the game with a one stick—specifically, the exact same stick throughout.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the instance he went through the game using only bombs or the attempt where he aimed to beat the story with no stamina. A one-branch playthrough, however, seems impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the weakest weapon in the entire game. Yet if the stick shatters, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The simple answer is exploits. The complete story, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak the game's save file system to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So PointCrow does a “setup” save where he progresses normally, and the actual file, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him going through the intro and first starting area, and this Link gains full stamina and health. From this point, he triggers a cutscene and halts partway through to tell the game to load an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and creates a new game file that merges the states of the first two files.

That causes fresh issues, though. The fused save file has a Link that did not acquired the ability to access shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes readily, but executing it means depending on an unstable build of the title that fails to open certain locations. As with other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the game midway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Challenges

Curiously, the introductory form of Link is coded so that he cannot break any weapons he wields, likely to avoid a scenario where the user gets trapped at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the wear issue, as the character he transfers between dimensions is the one from the start of the story. It's a smart trick, but not one that eliminates all possible difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a weak weapon that makes battles tedious. But at that point, it's all a question of determination and perseverance. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an plentiful supply of consumables to improve his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a bug that allows him to phase through the world. A few would find these means reason to question the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He also implements a penalty of sorts stating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll ban one fan from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

PointCrow manages to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles look painful. The YouTube version of his quest spares the audience endure the entire conflicts, which is a good thing when a few of them last several long hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible 23 hours. The Ganondorf battle, which erases Link's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is after all only a stick. He is unable to always duplicate objects during the fight.

So, is it possible? Technically, he manages to overcome the beast form of the antagonist. But the game forces the user to wield the legendary weapon as the last attack, so technically, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow removed more than a thousand users in his Twitch chat. RIP.