Never Change

Evolution is key to success. Charles Darwin knew it long before the news reached the StarCraft II scene, but it applies equally in our esport as it does in nature. Only the best adapted win the battle and remain alive. As animals have over the span of thousands of years, pro-gamers are faced with the reality that they cannot always stick to their preferences and comforts. As the game, or even the esports landscape around it, change, so do players. Most of them are young people who, as their career goes on, grow up as individuals. But especially in StarCraft II, metagame shifts have forced essentially everyone in the game to adopt new ways of playing the game, only to abandon them again with the next change. Everyone but TRUE.

TRUE is one of a kind, an anomaly of nature. He has never changed. The style of play commonly associated with him is still the exact same as it was years ago, when he was not yet a WCS player, but competed under the Jin Air banner in Korea. The aura he exerts is the same as it always was—he is almost predictably volatile. He is intimidating because the way he plays is effective and difficult to counter even if it is expected. Builds that regular Zerg players would never think of doing TRUE has crafted and refined.






This article could have been written about Jin Air TRUE in 2014. Even then he would always favor unorthodox, usually zergling-heavy early game strategies, preferably ones that also incorporate queens, even as offensive tools, over a standard macro game. If a match moved past that stage TRUE would mass banelings and never transition. Even then he already had a long standing reputation for having an out-of-the-meta kind of approach to the game. No KeSPA team-house drove out the maniac in TRUE. You can imagine what happened when he was put into an environment with considerably fewer factors to discipline him. Today he is no different. TRUE will cheese his opponents because that is what TRUE has always done. In many ways it is his standard, and to deviate from it would be throwing a curve-ball.

When he made the move to the United States in 2016, TRUE had no chance but to win a WCS Circuit Event in order to qualify for BlizzCon, as he had missed the first two due to visa issues. And so he did. He brought a brand of play that nobody in the region was prepared for, but that TRUE had been accustomed to for years. That was the point in his career where TRUE should have dropped off and disappeared. Given enough time and exposure, his idea of playing StarCraft II should not have been enough to propel him to another Global Finals, no matter how comfortable TRUE was with a style that was truly his own. It is where evolution should have run its course and TRUE should have been punished for his lack of adaptation, where others should have been rewarded. That was not the case. TRUE, the dinosaur, survived.

He survived because there is nobody like him. Preparing to face TRUE must be a nigh impossible task. Even if you, as a potential opponent, found someone who knew the full spectrum of absurd early aggression TRUE employs, they would never possess the same level of finesse and execution with it that he does. These strategies and odd mind-bending variations are second nature to TRUE and nobody else on the planet will be able to replicate them. Once you have prepared, and you find yourself in the game against him, the paranoia is set to begin. Where are his hatcheries? Is he hiding tech somewhere? Is he cancelling anything? How is he trying to trick you this time? This essentially lets TRUE dictate the flow of every game he plays.

It is, however, a fact that he has been much less successful this year. Perhaps that stems from the same source as his longevity. Despite how broad the spectrum of TRUE's strategies is, they all ultimately follow a similar trend. They are most likely very aggressive builds that attack early on. Even if not perfectly scouted, most players at BlizzCon are good enough to remain defensively solid until they are certainly safe, especially against a player like TRUE. A lot of aggressive strategies are defended quite similarly. And because TRUE has stuck to his guns, he will lose games to that reality.

Nobody knows how TRUE will fare at BlizzCon. He could be a huge success, or he could crash and burn. If the latter happens, so be it. That is the price TRUE is willing to pay to stay true to himself. Winning has never been the ultimate goal for TRUE. It has always been winning his way. He could have adapted a different approach long ago, become a macro player striving for the lategame—he certainly has the mechanical ability for it. But that is not who TRUE is. Every game is an accurate replica of his mind. He expresses himself more strongly than most other players, and that is what makes him as exciting and unique as the games he produces.