The final CS:GO Major is going to be genuinely different from the previous ones, courtesy of a unique backdrop, with the grind and the dawn of a new era making a strong mindset more valuable than tactics or innovation. Who wants it the most? – for once, it’s a genuine question, one that might determine the outcome of the tournament. Here’s why.

Reflections on Rio

Despite the jam-packed schedule and the absence of some heavy-hitters, IEM Rio was both a ton of fun and a useful benchmark by which to judge the teams heading into the final CS:GO Major. After an upset-ridden RMR, the super-packed calendar offered us one more chance to take stock of the CS:GO elite – even if a portion of the teams present missed out on the Paris bonanza.

If anyone needed confirmation of how flukey Fnatic’s Legend spot was, they got it in just two rounds – and if you struggled to pinpoint what led to Cloud9’s demise in the qualifiers (hint: mental issues and sheer exhaustion), then their semifinal series cleared that issue up as well. We also got to see just how vulnerable and unstable the current top teams are – FaZe flamed out early, NAVI were toothless against Heroic, NIP made a meal of things again, and Heroic once again struggled at the business end of a LAN event. Let me get back to the winners in just a sec.

We’ve reached a point where the intangibles have become tangible. We’re deep into what is looking like the final metagame of CS: GO, with no significant updates expected to shake up the gameplay before the release of the sequel. This means that the margins for potential innovation are extremely small, and everyone should have a good idea about the possibility spectrum and each other’s playbook. It’s no wonder we don’t have a definite favorite heading into the event – in fact, this is arguably the most open Major we’ve seen in the history of the game.

We will always have Paris

It all takes place in the shadow of two world wonders: the Eiffel Tower and Counter-Strike 2. Much was made about this being the last opportunity to make your mark in CS:GO matches. Realistically, no one knows how impactful the engine change will turn out to be and no player or team can be sure that they will make the leap across the great divide. It’s not just bluster and marketing: the fact that this is the last event of its kind truly makes a difference. It is also the last real storyline to settle in the Global Offensive era: there are also no Intel Grand Slam-related shenanigans to consider, after all.

Couple these with the incredibly busy schedule heading into the event – and the noticeable signs of exhaustion from teams and players, like Twistzz, whose body started to give up under the stress in Rio, or the way Cloud9 collapsed across the two events, and it’s clear that this Major is going to be much more about perspiration than inspiration, perseverance rather than innovation.

Even once you factor all this in, there’s also the messy seeding system to make sense of. Much was made of the shortcomings of the RMR format and how this loosely established Swiss bracket leads to problematic outcomes, which ultimately saw Fnatic qualify as Legends after defeating three minnows while Cloud9, currently ranked #6 in the world, missed out on the event entirely. There’s also a certain je ne sais quoi to FaZe showing up as the lowest-seeded team in the Challengers Stage. The chaos will likely persist all throughout the event: it simply takes too long to unskew a poorly seeded bracket, as Hellraisers’ top eight run in London or Immortal’s Krakow grand final appearance testify.

There are other disruptions, too, courtesy of the darkening of the skies elsewhere in the world. Monte’s coach, lmbt, won’t be able to make it to Paris on account of Ukraine’s war-related laws, just one of the many dominoes that fell over the past years. We know it all: a pandemic, a war, an economic downturn, the fear, the uncertainty. It affects all of us.

So the gameplay and tactics are as well-established as ever, everyone has at least one eye on the great leap forward to CS2, players and coaches are battling with exhaustion and the seeding is all over the place. Is it really such a stretch to suggest that Vitality might win the whole thing?

The Vitality question: what about the hometown heroes?

In the end, just a tiny French contingent made it to the Paris Major. However, would it be such a shock to see them go all the way? Yes, the bees have been super inconsistent throughout the entire tenure of the primarily French-Danish mix squad, but ESL Pro League Season 16, and, yes, IEM Rio showed that they do have high enough heights needed to win a tournament against the elite.

In an environment where everyone is exhausted, the margins are as fine as they’ve ever been, and all the top teams seem to exhibit distinct kind of flaws, the grit showed by Vitality in the semis against Cloud9 serve as a sign of peaking at the right time and just the sort of never-say-die attitude that’s needed to win a messy event like this one is shaping up to be.

If dupreeh can maintain a high level of form and ZywOo delivers against high-calibre opposition, this could be their best chance to go out on a high, one way or another.