Streaming Star Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Stick

One could think that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that impose unique restrictions on a gameplay session. However, while many gamers have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom using just a wooden stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the player who aimed to clear the adventure with a one branch—meaning, the exact same stick throughout.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, like the instance he played the title using only explosives or the attempt where he tried to defeat the story with no energy. A single stick run, however, sounds impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the weakest weapon in the entire game. But if the branch breaks, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple explanation is exploits. The complete answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator does a “setup” save where he progresses standardly, and the real save, where he's restricted. The setup file has him going through the intro and first starting area, and this character gains maximum endurance and health. From this point, he starts a cutscene and pauses partway through to tell the game to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets mixed up and generates a new game file that merges the states of the first two files.

This causes new problems, however. The merged save file has a Link that did not obtain the ability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch fixes easily, but executing it means relying on an buggy build of the game that fails to open some areas. Like other obstacles, he has a technical solution for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then updates the game partway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue form of the hero is coded so that he is unable to damage any tools he uses, likely to prevent a situation where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the wear issue, as the Link he transfers across universes is the version from the start of the story. It's a smart trick, but not one that eradicates all potential difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a weak weapon that makes battles tedious. But at that stage, it's all a question of grit and perseverance. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant number of items to improve his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also employs a glitch that allows Link to clip through the world. Some would find these means reason to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He further uses a penalty of sorts stating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll ban a viewer from his live stream, establishing an motivation to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

The streamer manages to get through several of the game's bosses, but the fights look painful. The YouTube version of his quest doesn't make the audience sit through the entire conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them take multiple hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible twenty-three straight. The final villain battle, which depletes the hero's health as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The indestructible stick is after all just a stick. He is unable to always duplicate objects during the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the software compels the user to use the Master Sword as the last strike, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow banned over 1,000 users in his live stream. RIP.