Twistzz from FaZe Clan: “My opinion is that this game is not ready to be released on Wednesday.”

Ahead of the playoffs of ESL Pro League S18, we spoke to twistzz from FaZe Clan and asked him a few questions. Here’s the interview:

You’ve been playing for FaZe Clan for more than two and a half years. But you’re from Canada. Does that keep you away from home for long periods of time?

Yes. Playing on a European team while being from North America means that I don’t get to see home very much. To be honest, I haven’t been to Canada one time this year. But it’s what I signed up for really. I’m not shocked at all. However, occasionally, I do think about the time that I’m going to miss while being away from my family.

In the group stage, your team played well against 9z and Fnatic but had serious problems versus the new Na’Vi roster. Were you surprised by how they approached the game on Anubis or was it just one of those days when nothing seems to go as planned?

Could be a combination of both. They played a good game and nothing was working for us. Some days are like that. But I think it was to some extent a self-defeat, at least on the mental side. Anubis is a map on which we have excellent results in practice. And the game felt nothing like our practice.

It was as though we were playing Anubis from five months ago. It was disappointing knowing that we didn’t put up a good fight.

Did you feel some pressure because this was a match for the first place? Or was it something else that caused your team to have a bad day?

No, there was no pressure. Both teams had already qualified for the playoffs. We were mostly playing for pride.

If you could pick your next opponent, who would it be? MOUZ of FURIA?

I don’t have a preference. It would be nice to play MOUZ for the chance to get revenge for the RMR, because they put us in a bad situation. But playing FURIA should also be fun. Their new lineup is cool to look at.

It could be scary to play either of these teams because they’re both hungry to win. To beat them, we need to play our best game. Otherwise, it could be very tricky for us.

Thanks for everything CSGO ❤️ been a wild ride from day 1 to now, ended up playing 1196 maps and 31619 rounds on LAN 😍 I’m great full for all the good and bad memories. Now it’s time for @CounterStrike 2 – looking forward to get deep into it 🔥

— karrigan (@karriganCSGO) September 27, 2023

Valve’s recent tweet suggests that CS2 will be released this Wednesday. What do you think about the game so far?

My opinion is that this game is not ready to be released on Wednesday. If it happens, then so be it. I played a decent amount of CS2. For me, it doesn’t have a CS feel. It feels clunky, the character feels heavy. I don’t know if it’s just my perception or not, but everything feels much slower in this game.

At the moment, I feel like you can get one-tapped by anyone, which is not the usual CS feeling. On Reddit, I see something new every day. It shows me that the game is not ready. But it’s a similar situation with CS:GO, when it was first released.

Do you think they should release it to get more feedback from the community but keep CS:GO for professional tournaments?

Yes, that would be a good idea. To have CS2 out there with lots of people playing it while Valve collects data. But still have CS:GO running in tournaments. Organizers should be told in advance what the final date will be when they can run CS:GO in a competitive environment.

Some structure of this nature would work well. To me, that is the most professional way to do things. But game developers work in interesting ways. I’m sure they have a very tricky situation to handle.

FaZe has been competing with the same roster for a long time. Do you feel like you need to reinvent your game frequently or is it enough to stick to your main playstyle?

We stayed with the same roster because CS2 is right around the corner and we have very good relationships with each other. We also have grinders on the team, who are interested in finding new things all the time.

Good chemistry and synergy favors us in a new game. Plus we’re playing really well in practice, so we don’t feel pressured to make changes to our roster. Of course, having good results in practice could also be a bad thing because we don’t get to see the flaws in our playstyle and then, in official matches, nothing feels the same.

This is especially annoying before the Majors. We can have an amazing bootcamp and then we go 0-3. It happens sometimes. But when I see how we play in practice, I don’t think we need to change our roster anytime soon.

Ok. Twistzz, thank you for the interview, and good luck in the playoffs!

Thank you!

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