Heading into my interview with Jae-hee “Gesture” Hong from the London Spitfire, I was fully expecting the interview to be translated by the Spitfire General Manager Robin Lee. However, upon entering the room after their match against Toronto, Gesture greeted me and introduced himself in English and Robin let me know that Gesture was going to try to do the interview in English.

While Gesture did have some questions translated, he responded to every single one in English. Below is the verbatim transcript of our conversation, which instantly became one of my favourite interviews I’ve done. Full props to Gesture for learning English over the last year and a half, and being brave enough to do an interview in a second language. Although Gesture assured me his English was not good, I insisted that not only was it great, but it was much better than my non-existent Korean. The following transcription has not been altered or edited to fix grammatical errors in the responses.

Harry: How do you feel this year compared to last year? Do you feel more confident, do you think you’re playing better? Is it more tiring? How do the two years compare?

Gesture: I think I feel like our team, 2018 champions, so I feeling more nervous because we are champions. So, I think just like, ‘oh we should win.’

There’s a lot of expectations.

Yeah, but almost same [as last year].

Fusions, from Boston, told me that your Reinhardt last week was much better than the beginning of the season. How have you tried to improve your Reinhardt play and how have your coaches helped you improve?

Actually, Reinhardt has not much individual skills, more important… [claps his hands together, trying to think of the word] Teamwork! But I had some problems as Reinhardt, but our coaches help me and our teammates help me, so getting better.

Is there another player in the League that you’re most inspired by, or that you think is playing really well this season?

For now, I think…. Mm…. Thinking… [Thinks for roughly 30 seconds] I think Sinatraa. His Zarya is really good, so I pick Sinatraa.

Fair enough! Instead of GOATS, would you prefer 2/2/2 role lock, so you have to play 2 of each role? Would you prefer that, or would you prefer a non-role lock system?

[Robin translates a little bit] [Gesture confirms something] I think… [Confirms with Robin again] I think 2/2/2 lock system is better, for now. Just my opinion. Overwatch is basically FPS game, so I think for now just like triple tanks, triple healers… little bit… not fun? I love more 2/2/2, because our Widowmaker shooting someone and get headshots and our Monkey dive and their Monkey dive… Ablablablabla [Makes hand motions of two Winstons diving each other].

So next year, if you stay with the team, you would move to London. Are you looking forward to moving to London? Have you thought about that?

I’m really excited for living in London, because I love to watch soccer game! I like fish and chips!

Will you like travelling more next year, because you’ll have to travel around for different games? Or do you like staying in one place?

Yeah I will. I want to travel in more cities and more countries. I want to.

On the PTR there’s Mcree and D.va changes. If they came through, do you think they would help your team or do you think they would diminish 3/3 or make it worse? (NOTE: The changes have since gone onto the live servers)

I think that the patches not important for GOATS, because I think in GOATS most important hero is Brig. So, I don’t know how can we stop playing GOATS.

As long as Brig is there, there will be GOATS.

Yeah, Brig is most important.

The London Spitfire go up against the New York Excelsior in their next match of Stage Three on Friday the 21st of June at 4:00pm PST. You can view the full Overwatch League schedule here.

Featured image provided by Robert Paul for Blizzard Entertainment.

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