One could think that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of creative challenge runs that impose unique rules on a gameplay session. However, although numerous players have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom with just a stick, streamer the streamer stands out as the player who aimed to clear the adventure with a single branch—meaning, the exact same stick throughout.
PointCrow is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the instance he played the title using only bombs or the effort where he aimed to beat the story with no energy. A single stick playthrough, though, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is especially important when dealing with the weakest tool in the whole world. Yet if the branch breaks, that's it. Game over.
How did he do it? The straightforward answer is glitches. The full answer, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator does a “setup” save where he progresses normally, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him going through the prologue and first starting area, and this Link gains full stamina and hearts. From this point, he starts a cutscene and halts partway through to instruct the game to open an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets confused and generates a third game file that combines the states of the first two files.
That causes fresh problems, though. The fused save file has a Link that never obtain the capability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch addresses readily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy build of the title that fails to open some locations. Like everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He begins the game on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the software midway through to make sure it starts working properly.
Curiously, the prologue form of Link is programmed so that he cannot break any tools he uses, likely to avoid a situation where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the adventure. But that's also how the streamer gets around the durability problem, as the character he transfers between universes is the version from the start of the story. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eliminates all possible difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a weak item that makes encounters tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of determination and dedication. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant number of items to improve his attack, or stock up on healing spirits. He also makes use of a bug that enables Link to clip through the environment. A few would find these methods reason to question the legitimacy 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 penalty of kinds stating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll remove one viewer from his live stream, creating an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.
The streamer succeeds to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights appear grueling. The video version of his quest doesn't make the viewer sit through the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when a few of them take multiple hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing twenty-three straight. The final villain battle, which erases the hero's health as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is after all only a stick. He can't necessarily clone objects midway the battle.
Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the game forces the player to use the legendary weapon as the last strike, so technically, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?
In the end, the streamer banned more than 1,000 users in his live stream. RIP.
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