oBo: "poizon absolutely can be the best AWPer in the world, if he’s not already"

We spoke with Complexity's young gun Owen "⁠oBo⁠" Schlatter shortly after they kicked off their DreamHack Open Anaheim campaign with a victory over MIBR.

Complexity dismantled MIBR in the first half of their opening matchup at DreamHack Open Anaheim, racing to an 11-4 lead at the break. The juggernaut were unable to immediately bring about an end to the map as MIBR closed the deficit following the side swap, but they ultimately stabilized following a quad kill and 1vs2 clutch from Benjamin "⁠blameF⁠" Bremer to net themselves a 16-11 victory and set up a match against Gen.G.

In a short post-match interview, oBo spoke about the team's struggle in the online Minor qualifiers, working with blameF, his thoughts on Valentin "⁠poizon⁠" Vasilev, and Complexity's mindset going forward.

You guys had a really dominant start in the first half against MIBR, but then struggled to close things out in the end there. That seems to be a tendency with you guys in your online matches at least, in terms of having difficulty closing matches out, why is that the case?

I honestly think it’s because we’re such a new team, and there is a lot of pressure on us, but I think as we keep playing its going to keep getting better. Toward the end of matches, people tense up, people hesitate, and that’s kind of why, but as we get more experience that will fade away.

Speaking of getting experience, you had a pretty stellar showing at BLAST Premier, and in “Through the Smoke” your teammates even said that you did not expect to beat any of the teams in your group. What was it like for your team making your LAN debut against teams like Astralis and Vitality?

Before BLAST, we were obviously struggling in the open qualifiers. We were not in a good team morale at all, honestly, so when we went into BLAST we didn’t have that much pressure on us. In the qualifiers we were always expected to win, but in BLAST we were the underdogs, so the pressure was gone. Playing against Astralis and those teams was honestly an amazing experience for us, and since we won some matches our confidence really improved.

For you specifically, coming into a team like this that has Danish players, a Bulgarian player in one of their first English teams, what has that experience been like as your first professional team?

It’s been very difficult. We obviously have a unique situation with our team, like some players have a hard time speaking English, but honestly I’ve liked it a lot. I like my teammates and we’re all working hard together to try to improve any social situations, in-game communication, and stuff like that.

You and poizon together have been the “dynamic duo” for the team so far, especially after poizon out-AWPed device at BLAST. What is he like in-game?

poizon honestly is so good, he impressed me more than any other player I’ve ever seen. I think he absolutely can be the best AWPer in the world, if he’s not already. He has a really calm attitude, he gives good communication, and he’s just an all-around good player, in my opinion.

Right after your showing at BLAST, you played in the last Europe Minor qualifier. Can you speak about the difference between your performance online and offline, and what missing out on the Major meant to you guys?

It’s kind of the same thing, when we play online our energy isn’t as good, and also in our minds we expect to win, so the pressure is a lot different as an experience to playing on LAN.

When we didn’t make the Major it was really sad for us, but we also knew that there’s so many tournaments this year, and we can’t get down this early because we know just beat Astralis on LAN, and we know we’re more confident on LAN.

The opponents you have here, with you having the more difficult of the two groups, what went into your preparation going into this tournament?

Our preparation wasn’t too intense, but our coach keita and blameF definitely do watch the other teams’ matches, and we do make a game plan for each map. But in these best-of-ones, it’s hard to guess the map we’re going to play, so we can’t prepare too much and just have to play our own game, and hopefully we win.

You have a lot of support staff behind you, how have they been helping you work through some of your issues like communication?

We have a lot of support from our organization. poizon specifically, he had a hard time speaking English, but it’s so much better than when we first joined; he’s taking English classes. Kristian (k0nfig), he has good English, and blameF as well. It’s more about experience, the more we play together it just gets better and better, but it's not too big of a deal right now.

You guys are set to play in ESL Pro League next month. With all the back-and-forth between FLASHPOINT and ESL recently, what appeals to you about playing in EPL?

The Pro League is just all super set, and the fact that we’re a partner team - I’m super, super grateful that Complexity got us in as a partner team - it’s awesome because we can get invited to ESL events, we go to the Pro League, and ESL always runs great events. They’re probably the best tournament organizer, them or BLAST. It’s pretty exciting to play since all the best teams are in EPL.

What has the experience with blameF and your team helping to bring you up as an individual, and teaching you to play in the game?

I honestly think that in-game, I have an idea of the player I want to be and how I want to play in-game, but blameF’s system… it’s a work in progress for myself, and the whole team.

We’re constantly changing things and we’re always adapting. blameF explains what we want to do, how we want to play certain maps, and he gives ideas all the time. He’s always critiquing us in practice, he critiques us a lot, and we’re always hungry to learn from that.

Lastly, there were a handful of changes made to a few maps, how are you guys approaching that and what are your thoughts on them?

The changes are pretty subtle, we don’t make too many gameplay changes based off the changes. On Mirage you can self-boost window, so we definitely have some new CT setups on that map, and on Dust2 I personally play B differently because teams can throw executes over now.