When Fathom Events announced that they had partnered with Valve to bring this year’s International Grand Finals live into select movie theaters, my girlfriend immediately decided we were going. My girlfriend, who hates mobas almost as much as she hates movie theaters mind you, knew just what it meant to be able to take part in what could be a once in a lifetime experience. Thankfully our city of residence happened to have a theater hosting the event. There was very little excuse for us to miss the world’s largest E-Sports event being the first such tournament to be live broadcasted on the big screen. As gamers, we knew what this meant to our beloved community. Suddenly I didn’t feel any amount of disrepute for my hobby, I was proud of it. I walked boastfully and confidently into the theater to have my ticket scanned for the event. My excitement was uplifted moments before we left for the theater when Evil Geniuses defeated LGD in the Semi-Finals, meaning the team I had been rooting for would be playing for the title against the Wild Card Team who also fought their way up to the top. This was going to be an amazing show.
We arrived to a completely empty theater a few minutes before the scheduled start of the event. We were ecstatic to have a whole theater to ourselves! But we also weren't disappointed when 4 other people showed up to witness the start of the last five matches of TI5. So now we had other people to scream and shout at the screen with as we rooted for the American team to defeat China’s Wild Card team, CDEC.
And holy shit, the teams came out swinging. The first two matches where action packed kill fests, you would think you were watching an all star match it was so crazy. EG took the first game by a country mile, and CDEC retaliated heavily in game two. And game three, jesus if you guys missed it go watch this match. I don’t think I’ve watched a more tense match of Dota. Not as action packed, but each team kept feeling out their opponents, never fully engaging, all as CDEC slowly gained a huge gold advantage around the 40 minute mark, only to have EG make a huge comeback off of a counter gank, putting them only one victory away from becoming TI5 Champions. My hype couldn’t have been higher, I had been enjoying popcorn and a banana flavored ICEE (the only good thing about a minions movie existing) while watching an E-Sports event on a Movie Theater screen, what more could this nerd need? I know what I wanted, I wanted to see EG take home the Aegis. And I wanted them to do it in another exciting match, with epic team fights and a great hero line up.
Well I couldn’t have asked for a better hero line up for this match. We weren’t the only ones excited, with every kill all of us in the theater where bursting with excited yelling and “Ohh Shits!” throughout the entire match. EG showed their confident and experienced tactics as the superior Dota team right from the start, with Naga Siren being the unsung Hero of the match keeping all the lanes healthy for Radiant. But the deciding moment of the match came when CDEC tried to sneak a Roshan from under EG’s nose, and were brutally punished for it.Any chance of the match being anyone's game had been completely squandered at that point, as EG took the victory (and our breath)shortly after.
The experience in that giant room was unreal, I might as well have been a spectator in the Key Arena itself, and we couldn’t wait to hear the thoughts of both teams before the closing ceremony. We got to hear from a humble and surprised EG, but we spent no time with the 2nd place finalists who fought their way into the International all the way to the grand finals. This was only further frustrated by a very out of place closing performance by DeadMau5, who played very ominous music as the camera quickly zoomed in and out of a close up shot of the DJ. It was one of the most out of place things I have ever scene. It reminded me of being at an amazing epic Metal concert, only to have the venue play Nickleback after the show in order to get us out of the building quickly (which always worked very well). And that’s kind of what it felt like here. But I don’t think anyone is going to let an out of place DJ performance ruin the memories of that incredible series of games. Nor will I ever forget witnessing Gaming's largest tournament live on the big screen.
I too watched this tournament and to my surprise found myself very engaged in it’s viewing. For a game I haven’t played since it was a Warcraft 3 mod back in the day it was great fun to see people who really knew what they were doing compete for an enormous prize.
I do agree with the wtf Deadmou5 as I left to play Rocket League as soon as I saw him. And I was a little disappointed that they didn’t interview both teams. CDEC was just ushered out of the room I thought somewhat unfairly. Afterall they won the right to be there too. Other than that it was a great event to see.
yup, idk if they where rushed out or just ddint want to talk, but everything else about the event was great.
They still won half a million each so I wouldn’t feel too bad about them.
True but it would have still been cool to hear them react to that achievement. Or at least see both teams compliment each other t the end of the games
Yeah I mean, that’s great. I just would have like to have seen them interviewed. They should feel proud of that achievement. Especially as a wild card contender.
Certainly congrats to both teams.