Twitch Personality Dedicates 37 Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Stick

One could think that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted creative challenge runs that apply special rules on a gameplay session. Yet, although numerous players have tried to finish the game using only a stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the individual who endeavored to beat the adventure with a one stick—meaning, the exact same one throughout.

The streamer is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the time he played the game solely with explosives or the attempt where he tried to defeat the story with no stamina. A one-branch run, however, seems unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is especially relevant when dealing with the weakest weapon in the entire game. But if the branch breaks, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward answer is glitches. The full story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that affect one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” file where he progresses normally, and the actual save, where he's limited. The setup save has him completing the intro and first tutorial island, and this Link acquires maximum endurance and health. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and pauses midway through to instruct the game to load an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and generates a third save file that combines the conditions of the original two.

That causes new issues, though. The merged save file has a protagonist that never obtain the ability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes readily, but executing it means relying on an unstable version of the game that refuses to load certain locations. Like everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the game midway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the introductory version of Link is coded so that he is unable to damage any weapons he uses, likely to prevent a situation where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the wear problem, as the character he pulls across universes is the one from the start of the story. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eliminates all possible friction. The stick is still a ineffective item that makes encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's all a matter of determination and dedication. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant number of items to boost his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally employs a glitch that enables Link to clip through the environment. Some would find these methods grounds to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He further uses a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll remove one viewer from his live stream, creating an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to get through many of the game's bosses, but the battles look painful. The video version of his quest spares the audience sit through the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them last multiple long hours. One boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an incredible twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf battle, which erases the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable branch is after all just a piece of wood. He is unable to always duplicate objects midway the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the game forces the user to wield the Master Sword as the final strike, so technically, it's not fully a stick-only playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow removed over a thousand users in his live stream. Rest in peace.