The Dota 2 True Sight for The International 2021 Finals documentary between Team Spirit and PSG.LGD premiered on Sunday. It gave us a lot of insight into the players who competed in last year's biggest Dota 2 tournament. Coming out just before the main event of this year's International starts, it quickly reminded Dota fans why they love the game. As for us, there are some things we learned from True Sight that made us appreciate Valve, Dota 2, and the players of Team Spirit and PSG.LGD even more. Here are five takeaways we got from watching the Dota 2 True Sight for The International 2021 Finals.
In case you haven't watched the documentary yet, before you proceed, watch the emotional one-and-a-half-hour piece here:
5. The two teams knew each other very well and drafted accordingly
It should already be a given, but some fans still don't realize just how high the understanding of the game and your opponent requires to compete at this level of Dota 2. If it wasn't obvious before, it should be more obvious now, as we got an almost sequence-by-sequence retelling of the thought process and discussions of both teams during the drafting phase of their Grand Finals bout. Both teams correctly predicted the heroes they were planning to pick, and successfully banned heroes that the other team would have loved to choose. One instance of this was when Team Spirit was looking to pick Morphling, only for it to get banned, locking out Team Spirit's drafting options for the rest of that game's drafting phase.
4. Pressure Kills, Confidence Wins Games
What we've seen over the past few The International Finals True Sights was how chill and confident the eventual champions were. Back when OG and Team Liquid fought for the honor of becoming the first two-time TI champions, OG was calmer and collected compared to Team Liquid. When PSG.LGD fought against OG, OG was confident even though PSG.LGD was the favored competitor. With PSG.LGD reaching the Finals for the second time and narrowly reaching it just the year before by the time they faced Team Spirit, the pressure was on them, as they were already considered the uncrowned kings of Dota 2 when they were facing Team Spirit. A lot of people were betting on PSG.LGD to win, but it were the coolheaded Eastern European team who ended up winning, mostly because they didn't feel any pressure from losing, and hence allowed them to take more risks and make riskier plays.
3. Insights from the Foreign Broadcasts
We naturally watch our esports matches in the language we understand, so we usually end up missing out on what other language panels and casters discuss in their own broadcasts. We got snippets of the Chinese and Russian broadcasts all throughout True Sight, giving us (for the most of us) never-before-seen insight into the players' psyche from these talents' perspectives. We were able to hear from them what their and their communities' expectations were for the teams representing their regions, which gives us better understanding of players coming from different countries aside from ours. It proves that sometimes it pays to listen in on the commentary of foreign language broadcasts because they bring to the table insight that we wouldn't see anywhere else, much less in the English language broadcast.
2. Team Spirit's Wear Down Strategy
Undoubtedly Team Spirit proved to be the better team that day, but much of their success relied on their never quit attitude, something that they've already established just from the beginning of their Grand Finals series. We saw their coach Silent make a moving speech on how PSG.LGD, in spite of their legendary status and favorite odds, are also just human. They also realized that momentum is on their side and that they have more energy than PSG.LGD. The Chinese team would take time to warm up, while Team Spirit was hot on their success in the lower bracket finals against Team Secret. They figured that PSG.LGD would tire down faster than they would, given how Chinese teams sometimes have the habit of quitting early in games that they deem unsalvageable to save their energy for the next game in the series. Team Spirit took advantage of this and made sure that they won't prematurely call GG, that they won't give up an inch of the map without a fight, and that they would wear down PSG.LGD all the way even in losing games just to tire them for the kill. And as we already know now at this point, that strategy worked.
1. Team Spirit baited PSG.LGD into taking Tiny so they can draft Magnus themselves
Finally, we take a look at Collapse's Magnus. Collapse instantly entered the halls of Dota 2 fame as he showcased his skillful use of the hero Magnus. But many fans tend to forget that it's not only him who went on a rampage with the hero in the tournament. In fact, Team Spirit were just as wary of Faith_bian's Magnus (which was 6-0 in the tournament at that point). Many of the drafts would revolve around whether or not they would ban Magnus or take it for themselves. In the final match of the series, they wanted to play Magnus, but the first pick was with PSG.LGD. Not banning Magnus during their ban phase raises the risk of PSG.LGD picking the hero and possibly crushing Team Spirit underfoot with the magnataur's shockwaves and skewers. In the final match of The International 2021, Team Spirit initiated a gambit: until then the team has been banning Tiny every game as Ame's Tiny was a monster that was unbeatable all throughout the tournament. The team felt confident enough in their own Magnus that they were willing to give Tiny to the enemy just so they can get hold of Magnus. So, Team Spirit betted on themselves and on Collapse – baiting PSG.LGD into snagging a free Tiny just so they can capture Magnus for themselves.
Note that this gambit could have gone worse for Team Spirit. The team was really banking on Collapse's Magnus in the last game, knowing that it would be the hero who would win them the game. Should PSG.LGD have taken the Magnus anyway, ignoring the Tiny, we're not sure if Team Spirit could have won with the Tiny. But as we all know today, PSG.LGD took the bait and Team Spirit was able to give Collapse his Magnus which then clinically picked PSG.LGD apart. With the risk of suggesting that the entire last game of the series hinged on a single draft pick, Magnus was what tipped the scales towards Team Spirit's favor as they took down the tournament's favorites with a hero that really worked well with the team's strategy. It shows that sticking to your guns and believing in yourself more than you fear your adversary is needed to be on top of the competition.
Some other things we noticed while watching True Sight that we think are nice to note include Team Spirit opening treasures before their Grand Finals match, Yotaro's different nicknames for going bald during The International, and how we think that after watching the entire documentary, we agree with Valve's and PSG.LGD's verdict that there was nothing suspicious of xiao8's behavior that would prove that he was indeed throwing the Grand Finals in favor of an easy windfall of earnings from betting.
Thanks to these snippets and glimpses of what's actually happening inside the gaming booths of the teams during the Grand Finals of esports' most prestigious tournament, it's no wonder that fans really clamor for True Sight's release prior to the show's premiere was announced. The show was indeed worth the wait.
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