Dota 2

Edit: sorry, spoiler tags don't seem to be working!

It'd be a time sink for sure, but I think you can only fully appreciate the explosive rise in tension and the eventual resolution of both series after watching them in full.

For Liquid vs Talon, both teams could have taken g1, while Talon looked like the superior team in g2, and so g3 starts with everyone already quite on edge. Liquid seemed to struggle to stay ahead and at some point start slipping, and it eventually leads to the endgame situation and the hail Mary by Zai. It literally felt like the endgame scenario - where out of the millions of possibilities, and where all these specific events and conditions HAD to be fulfilled, both right and wrong, that we got this single final outcome - and it felt like Liquid, in one fell swoop, took their sealed fate by the throat, choke slammed into the ground and screamed "I DECIDE WHO WINS!" It's a historic dota moment with a great storyline to preface it.

For Spirit vs BB, we get a similar situation, and the atmosphere and emotion of the previous series is still palpable, so it just continues to build as Spirit seem to be on the back foot right from g1, looking like they were plain outdrafted by BB. Spirit hold, and hold, and hold, and with BB staring them down, 15k networth ahead, Spirit with Yatoro on Drow just straight up respond with a resounding NO. The game that BB should never have lost starts to slowly slip from their grasp in a fashion closely resembling Tundra's g3 loss to GG. Suddenly Spirit is on BB's high ground even with a networth disadvantage, and they all in on the T4 into throne push and pull of some impossible magic to win the game.

You'd think BB, with their history of tilt, would be completed out of it after the loss, but they have grown immensely since which is why I think they've garnered so much favor. They show a lot more psychological resilience, and it looks like the first game never even happened in g2 as they outplay and crush Spirit quite convincingly, even if Spirit did try to push the game to its limits.

Which leads into g3, where Spirit start on the back foot from the very beginning and they never gain the advantage for a single moment, just desperately struggling to stay barely afloat. Pure and GPK look like MONSTERS for a good portion of the game. The tension only continues to build for the entire hour, and there are so many moments of brilliance and sheer skill that you'll never see even in regular pro matches - just something about the stakes of this last game that pushed every player in both these teams to play at a skill ceiling we might possibly never witness again (and you KNOW both teams are 100% invested in winning because the ridiculous amounts of pings by both sides). It leads to a base defense that turns into an all in down mid to throne by Spirit that I just don't have the words to describe.

Both series get some incredible and well-deserved casting from Sunsfan and Khezu. The only thing I could have asked for was a proper crowd to react to this, or maybe for me to have witnessed these series in the flesh. If we get moments like these in Seattle, we might just bring the newly renovated stadium down!

So yes, you'll see a lot of gushing about this day being one of the best days in competitive dota history, and no doubt about it that it was. And yes, if you call yourself a fan of dota, you'd out to witness these historic moments for yourself. It's worth it.