Twitch Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Branch
You might assume that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of creative challenge runs that apply special rules on a gameplay session. Yet, while numerous gamers have attempted to finish the game with just a stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the player who aimed to clear the adventure with a one branch—specifically, the exact same one throughout.
The streamer is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, like the time he went through the title using only bombs or the attempt where he tried to beat the story with zero energy. A single stick playthrough, though, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole weapon wear system, which is particularly important when working with the most fragile tool in the whole game. Yet if the stick shatters, that's it. Game over.
The Method Behind the Madness
How did he do it? The straightforward answer is glitches. The complete answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So PointCrow does a “setup” save where he progresses standardly, and the actual file, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him going through the intro and initial starting area, and this character gains maximum stamina and hearts. From this point, he triggers a cutscene and halts partway through to instruct the software to load an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and generates a new game file that combines the states of the original two.
That creates new problems, though. The merged save file has a protagonist that did not acquired the capability to enter shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes easily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy version of the game that refuses to open certain locations. Like everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the software partway through to ensure it begins working properly.
Bypassing Durability and Additional Challenges
Curiously, the prologue form of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to break any weapons he wields, presumably to avoid a situation where the user gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the wear problem, as the character he pulls between universes is the version from the start of the story. It's a clever trick, but not one that eliminates all possible friction. The stick is nonetheless a weak item that makes encounters onerous. But at that point, it's all a question of grit and perseverance. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant supply of consumables to boost his strength, or stock up on healing spirits. He additionally employs a bug that enables Link to phase through the world. A few would consider these methods reason to discredit the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He further implements a safeguard of kinds stating that, for each fairy he uses, he'll ban a viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to not overly rely on them.
Boss Fights and the Final Showdown
PointCrow succeeds to defeat many of the game's bosses, but the fights appear painful. The video version of his journey doesn't make the viewer endure the whole fights, which is a blessing when a few of them take multiple long hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes the hero's health as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is still just a piece of wood. He is unable to always clone items midway the battle.
Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow manages to overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the software compels the user to wield the legendary weapon as the last strike, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?
When everything is said and done, PointCrow banned more than 1,000 people in his Twitch chat. RIP.
