Twitch Star Spends 37 Hours Attempting to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that apply unique restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, while numerous gamers have tried to complete the game with just a stick, streamer the streamer stands out as the player who aimed to beat the adventure with a one stick—meaning, the very same one from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the time he went through the game using only explosives or the attempt where he aimed to beat the story with zero energy. A single stick run, however, seems impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly relevant when working with the weakest tool in the entire game. But if the stick breaks, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple explanation is glitches. The complete story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” file where he advances standardly, and the real file, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him completing the intro and initial tutorial island, and this Link acquires maximum endurance and health. From here, he starts a cutscene and halts midway through to tell the software to load an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and creates a third game file that combines the conditions of the original two.

This creates fresh issues, though. The fused file has a protagonist that never obtain the ability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch fixes easily, but executing it means depending on an buggy version of the game that refuses to open some locations. Like everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the software midway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue form of the hero is coded so that he cannot damage any tools he uses, likely to prevent a scenario where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the wear problem, as the character he transfers between dimensions is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a clever trick, but not one that eradicates all potential friction. The stick is still a ineffective item that makes encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of grit and dedication. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an plentiful number of items to boost his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a glitch that enables him to clip through the environment. Some would consider these means grounds to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He also implements a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for each fairy he uses, he'll ban a viewer from his live stream, creating an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to defeat several of the game's main enemies, but the fights look grueling. The video version of his journey spares the viewer endure the whole fights, which is a good thing when some of them take several long hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing 23 hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes Link's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is after all just a stick. He can't always duplicate items during the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, he does defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the software compels the player to wield the Master Sword as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not completely a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow banned more than a thousand users in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.