JT: "It's really easy to be creative in CS2 in terms of strategies"

The South African captain likes the new avenues opening up in CS2 despite not liking the game in its current state.

In what is already one of the team's biggest achievements to date, Complexity are now through to the semi-finals at IEM Sydney after taking down BetBoom in a 2-0 series in the opening match of the playoffs.

After the victory, Johnny "⁠JT⁠" Theodosiou spoke to HLTV about his first big arena experience and delved into Complexity's success early into Counter-Strike 2 and his thoughts on the game.

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You're through to the semi-finals. Just tell me about playing that game, making it to the arena in the first place, what was that experience like?

It's pretty amazing for all of us. Most of us besides EliGE and Mike [Grim], we haven't played on a big stage like that before. We've played on different stages like Melbourne earlier this year, but it's nothing like that. All of us were just excited, and we spoke about it and said let's just have some fun.

We've been playing really well, we played really well in that game as well, and I think the crowd was backing us as well. It's just been a lot of fun and it's been really amazing.

Did you expect the crowd to be behind you?

We did expect the crowd to be behind us this game, just because a lot of them know us from the Melbourne tournament, and we're an English-speaking team as well so I think they like us a lot. But the next game we're going to play G2 and they have an actual Australian on their team, so we probably won't get the same crowd support tomorrow.

This is the first big CS2 tournament, there's been a lot of conversation about how the game is right now, how some of the changes have affected everything. From your end, what has it been like leading in this game versus CS:GO?

Honestly, I don't like the game that much, but I like the changes that they tried to implement like nuking the smokes with HEs, no skyboxes, stuff like that. It's really easy to be creative in this game in terms of strategies, there's nothing blocking you constantly, and it makes the games a lot of fun especially for IGLs that are just trying to be creative.

A lot of the other things they tried to implement I think are good ideas, they're just not really working as intended, especially the sound and stuff like that, so I'm hoping that they fix those things.

In terms of leading a team and making sure that we're organized and managed, it's been pretty nice, and I'm able to be really creative in this game.

You've been creative in this game, but you've also been playing pretty well individually. During the group stage you had a couple of maps where you were top fragging, can you tell me about that upgrade in level for yourself individually?

Yeah, I'm still working on being consistent because I also had some really bad games too. I think the game right before this I maybe dropped 16 kills over two maps. Just in general across CS:GO I was starting to play a lot better because I think the team is a lot more organized right now and I'm playing in the roles that I think I should be playing.

EliGE, floppy, and Grim are playing very aggressive and I just try and set them up and play the end rounds, which I'm very comfortable in. With the way the team is organized right now, it's been really easy for me to play as an individual, and I don't have to sacrifice my life as much as I used to just because we're very organized and everything is working out.

Tell me more about EliGE coming into this team, obviously a player with a lot of experience, but what has it been like for you playing with him?

It's been awesome. It feels like he's a natural-born winner. When he plays, it's like everything he does is designed to win and designed to win consistently, and I think that's why he's been at the top so long and since the last six years he's been one of the best riflers in the game.

He's been teaching us a lot in terms of organizing the team, making sure that we're always on the same page, and just for me as a leader to have him on the team, he's helping a lot and helping a lot of my calling as well. He's been probably the biggest benefit on the team at the moment.

Complexity has always had this thing where you've made it pretty deep into matches and you're winning, but then some favorable round goes wrong and you lose 14-16. Is MR12 helping with that since you only need to get to 13 now, or what's going on with that?

Maybe, I mean I saw a lot of memes about us and how we're going to win a lot more games now that we don't have to get to 16. We're still losing these stupid rounds like we were before, but we're also winning a lot of the rounds we should win and a lot of the rounds that are more important.

So like we'll lose this 1v3 where we just all line up because we're being dumb, but the next round we'll implement a great strat and we just play really well together. I think if we get rid of all these fuck-ups, especially in the pressure situations, we'll be one of the best teams.

When I talked to floppy at the start of the event, he was complaining a lot about the sound as well. He had a really poor first game in the event, but in this series he had 100 ADR across the two maps. What's the evolution in team conversation been like from the start of the tournament to now, in terms of how you're feeling about the game and how you're discussing it internally?

The first or second game, we had a talk about... I mean, the game is the same for everyone. The sound is shit, we know it's shit, so let's not ruin our gameplan complaining about that and let's just play around that. We'll be able to win anyway, it's not that big of a deal as a team, obviously we want CS to be in the best state in can be, but for now we just have to play with what we got.

Going into your next game, as you mentioned it's going to be against G2, they'll have jks here who will obviously be the crowd favorite. How do you feel going into that matchup and having the crowd against you this time?

It's going to be fun. We had a similar situation when we were in Melbourne. I'm hoping they don't boo us too much, but we just have to go into the game and ignore the crowd if they are being negative toward us and try and do the best that we can.