Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, by now you surely know that Dignitas is back on the CS:GO map. And boy did they announce their return with a bang!
In case you are unfamiliar with what has been going on, here’s a little something to get you up to speed.
Back already? Good. Let’s dive straight into this!
The new Dignitas – a true treat or a cheap trick
The roster Dignitas unveiled was wrecking everyone in the pro circuit under the banner of Ninjas in Pyjamas… 6-7 years ago. Patrik “f0rest” Lindberg, Christopher “GeT_RiGhT” Alesund, Adam “friberg” Friberg and Richard “Xizt” Landström, together with their new coach/manager at Dignitas Robin “Fifflaren” Johansson were indeed the undisputed kings of CS:GO in the first few months of its release, exploiting the new game mechanics better than anyone else at the time.
This group achieved some feats that will never be forgotten by the core community – winning NiP its only Major at ESL One Cologne 2014, going 87-0 on LAN, defending Fifflaren from the hoards of haters. As I said, they had bars back in the day.
But that’s in the past. We are entering a new decade and to say each of the four remaining active players (Fifflaren retired in 2014) is out of his prime would be a gross understatement. Outside of f0rest, who, by the way, hasn’t made HLTV’s top 20 list since 2016, everyone is weeeeell on their way down.
Friberg hasn’t finished a year with a positive HLTV rating since 2014, Xizt since 2015, GeT_RiGhT since 2017. The three have a combined one competitive game played since September 2019 by virtue of GeT_RiGhT filling in for mousesports’ ropz in an ECS online match. He didn’t do well mind you.
I’ll stop with the negative statistics here as I feel like I’ve made my point and I certainly don’t want to bash on certified legends just for fun. I’ll actually give points to the regrouped veterans here. I haven’t mentioned the fifth member of the new Dignitas'playing squad. Young Håkon “hallzerk” Fjærli is a relative unknown to most, especially those who aren’t Norwegian, but according to Fifflaren he is in the center of this project and not his former teammates.
If that is actually true and not just an attempt to move the focus away from the established names, cause nobody would blame the youngster anyway, then I can do nothing but applaud Fifflaren and Dignitas’ vision. The former player cited Vitality as the main inspiration behind the “four veterans + a young promising AWPer” setup and while Vitality’s Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut is a talent particularly hard to replicate, the idea itself is something I can vibe with.
All in all, I don’t expect any fireworks from this team, and neither should you. I’ll be the first one to jump out of my chair screaming if I see GeT_RiGhT get a 1v3 in the final round to clinch a Dignitas title, but realistically speaking, that ain’t gonna happen.
Unless hallzerk proves to be the next ZywOo, the best thing to do is enjoy the (probably) last hurrah of four legends of the esport and leave all the hate behind. Because we all know, fan or not, we’re going to miss them when they step out of the server for good.
