Streaming Star Dedicates 37 Hours Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Stick

One could think that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that apply unique rules on a playthrough. However, while many players have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom with just a stick, content creator PointCrow stands out as the individual who endeavored to beat the game with a single branch—specifically, the exact same one throughout.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, like the instance he went through the game solely with bombs or the attempt where he tried to defeat the story with no stamina. A single stick playthrough, however, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which requires Link to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole durability system, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the entire game. Yet if the branch breaks, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The full story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator does a “setup” save where he advances normally, and the real save, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him going through the prologue and first tutorial island, and this character gains full endurance and health. From this point, he triggers a cutscene and pauses midway through to tell the software to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets mixed up and generates a third game file that combines the states of the first two files.

That causes new issues, however. The fused save file has a Link that never acquired the capability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the file exploit fixes easily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy build of the title that fails to open certain locations. Like other obstacles, he has a clever solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then updates the game partway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue version of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to break any weapons he uses, presumably to prevent a scenario where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer bypasses the durability issue, as the character he pulls across universes is the one from the start of the story. It's a clever technique, but not one that eradicates all potential difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a weak weapon that renders battles tedious. But at that stage, it's all a question of determination and perseverance. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant number of consumables to boost his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a bug that enables Link to clip through the world. A few would find these means grounds to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He further uses a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll remove one viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to get through several of the game's main enemies, but the fights appear grueling. The video version of his journey spares the audience sit through the entire conflicts, which is a good thing when a few of them take multiple hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing twenty-three straight. The final villain battle, which depletes the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is still just a piece of wood. He is unable to always clone items midway the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow manages to overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the software compels the user to use the Master Sword as the final strike, so technically, it's not quite fully a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow banned more than 1,000 people in his Twitch chat. RIP.