Twitch Star Dedicates Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: 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 debuted, enthusiasts would have run out of novel challenge runs that apply unique restrictions on a gameplay session. However, while many gamers have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom using only a stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the individual who aimed to beat the adventure with a one stick—specifically, the very same one from start to finish.

The streamer is renowned for such difficult playthroughs, like the time he went through the game solely with explosives or the effort where he tried to defeat the game with no energy. A single stick playthrough, however, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is especially important when dealing with the most fragile tool in the whole game. Yet if the branch breaks, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple explanation is glitches. The complete story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have distinct 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 setup save has him going through the intro and initial starting area, and this Link gains full endurance and hearts. From here, he starts a cinematic and halts midway through to instruct the software to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets confused and creates a new game file that merges the conditions of the original two.

This causes fresh issues, though. The fused file has a protagonist that did not obtain the ability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses easily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy build of the title that refuses to open some locations. Like everything else, 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 midway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue form of Link is coded so that he is unable to break any tools he wields, likely to prevent a situation where the user gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the durability issue, as the Link he transfers across universes is the version from the start of the story. It's a clever technique, but not one that eradicates all potential difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a weak item that renders battles tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of grit and perseverance. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant number of items to improve his strength, or stock up on healing spirits. He additionally makes use of a bug that enables Link to phase through the environment. Some would find these means reason to question the validity of the run, but in my mind, he's a resourceful player who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He further implements a penalty of sorts stating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll ban a fan from his live stream, establishing an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

PointCrow manages to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights look grueling. The video version of his quest doesn't make the audience endure the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them last several long hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible twenty-three straight. The final villain showdown, which erases the hero's health as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is after all only a stick. He is unable to necessarily duplicate objects during the battle.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, he does defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the game compels the player to wield the Master Sword as the final strike, so technically, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow removed over a thousand users in his Twitch chat. RIP.