Yasuke is actually a fantastic choice as far as history/narrative goes.
A shame the game looks like more generic Assassin’s Creed Mapfucking+Crowd Supermurder.
Which is fine if that’s your thing, but I haven’t been thrilled by an AC game since… well, AC1.
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Oh, this is AC? Damn, I was hoping it might’ve been something new/good.
I got my heart broken too
They piss away all that potential trying to make more money, the irony is if they just focused solely on making great games, the money would follow.
They could be doing so much better, but they choose to fuck it up every time.
Not in their minds. Making something good would cost more this quarter. Might make more profit when the game comes out, but that probably takes years and requires hiring talented game designers, so instead they choose to make a cheap game now and release it to the same type of people who buy Madden every year.
I mean, look at Halo Infinite. Guarantee the execs are wishing they’d released some garbage like a year after Halo 5 instead of spending all that time just to make it passably okay. I doubt that quarter’s sales numbers would be significantly lower.
Except it keeps fucking up over and over again lol
I’m not so sure. Briefly perusing the AC Wikipedia page, it doesn’t seem like they’re losing money even on their worst performers. Hell, it says Valhalla, which came out in 2020, had the best release week of any AC game they’ve ever made.
Even if the games suck, they’re not aimed at the sort of person who can recognize that.
My point is, they could make more money with a better game, not that they’re not making money.
Lmao your name is awesome.
Fear not, there’s a new Ghosts of Tsushimi in the works.
I just heard about this yesterday! I’m currently playing through the first, at around 55 hours and < 50% story completion and I’m loving it! I borrowed it from somebody four years ago but didn’t get too involved because it wasn’t my game, so I’m a bit disappointed by that. But this time I’m leaving no stone unturned, I love the combat system, and the stories and legends are fantastic! If Yotei is just as good as Tsushima, I can’t wait to play it!
I still haven’t played the first one, though I think I heard it got ported to PC (the greatest gaming platform ever to exist). Might just have to pick up a copy…
I’d argue Yasuke was kind of a poor choice. AC’s have traditionally been about stealth, blending in to crowds, and being famous person adjacent (e.g. You meet Da Vinci, but you aren’t him.). Yasuke being known for being the only black dude in Japan at the time kinda screws the pooch on all three. Of course more recent AC’s have leaned more into arpg stuff but still.
Had Yasuke been a key supporting character I think those guys still would have bitched about woke dei whatever, but it would have held a lot less sway.
I mean, you were a super flamboyant Renaissance guy with dual wrist blades murdering dozens of mooks per encounter as early as AC2, and by Brotherhood and 3 it only got more overt.
I mean, you were a super flamboyant Renaissance guy
Well you just described half of Italy there!
I have 2 kinda conflicting opinions about the whole thing
- Annoying the anti-dei crowd is always a big plus
- Is including Yasuke (who looks like a modern American in the game) racist in of itself because the publisher thought Americans will be unable to identify with a Japanese character.
The last AC game I’ve played is Brotherhood so it might all perfectly fit into the current AC universe idk.
I mean, I have trouble with the racism angle just because Yasuke is a famous historical figure who has shown up in media going back decades, if not centuries, who has very little known about him but was a part of some the biggest events to shape Japan. Nobunaga, his boss, is both one of the most famous and infamous people of Japanese history and constantly appears in Japanese media as either a hero or a villain. This makes Yasuke a perfect character for media set in the period, as he’s largely a blank slate outside of where he shows up in events around Nobunaga’s conquest of Japan.
I think around the time that they announced this game, there was also a movie being filmed about Yasuke, as well as a Netflix anime. I think the movie got canceled and the Netflix series turned into some Afro Samurai style thing, but that’s beside the point.
I haven’t played an AC game since the 5 hours I spent with Odyssey, but my understanding is that they threw away the larger narrative about the present day and now basically just use the tech from that plot as an excuse to let you play as historical or famous-adjacent figures in whatever time period setpiece that they want to use. One of my favorite Souls-like series, Nioh and Nioh 2, did something similar in the same time period, where in the first game you play as the British/Dutch sailor turned samurai, Anjin-san (literally Mr Pilot) in the first game, and a bastardized version of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, another famous samurai. Yasuke also shows up as a side character in both games.
Yasuke wasnt a samurai, and he was only documented in Japan for 3 years. Most of the myth behind him is unfounded. He was a kosho which is a servant. It is notable he was allowed to carry a short sword if he needed to defend his master, but he held no privileges that samurai did.
Its not known if he died in Japan or left, as his master was forced to commit seppeku and he then was captured. Its noted that he was not killed because he was deemed to be a “beast”, and in Japanese society back then it was considered shameful to kill a weaker enemy after capturing them.
I’m not sure where you got all of that stuff you wrote.
Yeah, I have the exact conflict about it.
I hate the pandering too but when I hear a breakdown from it and I hear “woke” and “DEI” and it makes me want to strangle that YT personality.
Can I interest you in a calm and respectful disembowelment of Ubisoft?
(edit) The video is nine minutes long.
YouSomeone downvoted me two minutes after I posted the link. You really only care about pushing the message, don’t you?oh I thought you said I specifically downvoted you and I was so confused.
It blows my mind that they had diversity consultants? Japan is like a huge part of the gaming industry the fact they really messed things up so bad is confusing. I figured they’d have a huge Japan division which would have been able to be like: “you know that’s wrong, right?” I like how he said the issue wasn’t diversity and that it was incompetency.
The end message is really important, I really needed to hear it.
I don’t know who the downvote came from, it just appeared suspiciously quickly. Apparently some people are trawling this thread for dissenting ideas that do not conform to the herd’s opinion.
I’m sure Ubisoft had some sort of consultants about cultural and historical matters, but their involvement in production of the game and marketing is dubious at best. It still fucks me up that anyone thought it was okay to use a destroyed cultural/religious object as marketing material, even without knowing its connection to the Allied bombings. I maintain my position that Ubisoft is exploiting these ideas callously and arrogantly and should not be given the benefit of doubt.
AC hasn’t been about stealth since they stupidly killed off Desmond.
That makes me wonder if the gameplay is more segmented, so Yasuke gets the upfront battles that became popular in AC Oranges, while the other lady gets the covert social stealth.
AC Oranges
Was that the one set in Florida?
Palm trees, sand, crocodiles… Maybe?
They showed some gameplay that had one character collect information, and then you get a checkpoint of sorts before the actual mission where you choose which character to use. Yasuke can bust up the front door and whack everyone, or Naoe can climb the walls and crawl underwater. It’s suggested that this is most of the game, but it’s safe to presume there will be some missions here and there that require a specific character.
Odyssey and Valhalla were both more on the RPG side, Mirage went somewhat back to form, though not fully. Could be they split between the two types, but based on Valhalla and Odyssey it’s more likely to me that Yasuke and Naoe’s gameplay loops aren’t super different, maybe some techniques (e.g. he throws a knife that does x damage, she throws a kunai that does x-5 damage + poison, or something like that.) and a couple story elements relevant to them.
I dont understand why ubisoft won’t just go back to the style of game AC 1-3 was. Or even just stop doing AC altogether and do a whole spinoff series like black flag.
They keep trying to reinvent things, and all anyone wants is the same old assassins creed but in a new locale.
The answer is simple even if it isn’t a good answer. With so much money involved in the development of AAA games now, a committee has to agree on what ventures are “safe”. These games won’t commit to new ideas or challenge players with a particular expected flow. They’ll basically let you do everything and play however you want.
I have wanted to parody that if I ever find myself running an E3 demo. “This game lets you play however you’d like. You can sneak in, with nobody ever seeing you, or you can run in guns blazing - and die instantly.”
Isn’t your last sentence a perfect description of Shadows? People are saying you can choose the big smashy guy or the small sneaky lady on each mission I think.
There is a second playable character that does all the stealth, an actual ninja. It looks like most of the missions will allow you to choose which character you’ll play. So no, Yasuke is still a great choice - for those who don’t want to play that way.
Honestly the first time I’ve thought about buying a game just because all the racists and misogynists hate it lmao
This is actually the first time I find myself interested in this series in a long time. Sengoku period Japan feels like a great setting for an Assassin’s Creed game and the fact that bigots hate it is just the cherry on top.
As much as these AC RPGs get hate, I found Odyssey awesome. If they don’t go too hard into the “grind before continuing main story” thing, Shadows could be pretty good too.
I too would buy a shitty game that will stop working due to drm in some short time to own the
libsracists!Relax, I’ve played the previous entries and found them interesting. The 8 year old Origins title hasn’t stopped working yet. Have any of the older ones?
I haven’t bought the last few, but loved Odyssey and even found the dreary miserable deserts of Origins somewhat of a cool setting. Sengoku era Japan is also a great setting so I’m anticipating a game with many flaws that will be frustrating, but fun.
There’s a solid chance Ubisoft goes bankrupt and all the drm required games go down at the same time. They also have a terrible track record with opening games up to keep them alive past their service life.
Its a good thing its never been hard to break their DRM.
There’s a conspiracy theory that the Guillemot family (with the help from Tencent) is looking to turn Ubisoft private and for that they need to tank the stock.
I’m not saying it will happen but it’s something that also explains their business decisions.
Ubisoft’s management won’t let them make a good game. imagine getting up tight about the color of the cast and not the mountains of copy paste garbage quests, microtransactions and time padding rpg mechanics.
It’s insane that of all the things they could complain about with AAA slop, that they pick representation at their breaking out. Not day one, game breaking bugs. Not Microtransaction. Not gambling/gatcha/loot boxes. Not shitty working conditions. Not workplace harassment.
Promoting the culture war is easier than actually talking about the real problems plaguing the games industry, it seems.
Ubisoft is that one guy what said something funny once and made that joke their whole personality.
Yup, basically their entire business revolves around making 2 games: Far Cry and Assassin’s Creed. And they keep remaking them over and over and over again ad nauseam, until even the most hardcore fans of the series are tired and bored.
but if we don’t make the game a chore to play how are we going to sell xp boosts?
imagine making deliberately shitty games so you can put monetary value to playing the game less.
People keep saying stuff like this but I keep playing fun Ubisoft games.
It’s like how people say evening EA makes is trash yet i just finished that fantastic dead space remake
I’ve found it best to stay 3-4 Assassin’s Creed’s behind, pick them up for $5 on a Steam Sale. I explore the world, do the story and just completely ignore the low-effort side quest spam. Then they tend to be a pretty okay experience still.
I’ve done exactly as you said. I’m doing them one in every two years and I’m having fun. I don’t think I’ve ever paid more than 5 euros for one game. They are the kind of low effort easy fun but that’s exactly what I want. I have my hard games and series for when I want that type of experience
i had a gaming pc with three monitors set up to play across all of them and assassin’s creed was wild
That sounds incredible. I can’t imagine my graphics card can do that without smoking up the house.
2030 goals
As someone who has been an avid gamer since the 90’s; I see a choice between a tank or a rogue… What’s the problem?
Also, I think the story of a black samurai is interesting and cool. Even if, like most history of that nature, it might be heavily embellished. “Conservatives”, can y’all, for the live of glob, stop politicized fukting everything. Geez.
Yasuke is based on a real life, Black samurai, who unfortunately, did not have too much written in detail about him. This does mean that almost any depiction is going to be embellished or at the very least, unverifiable.
I do hate the Netflix show about him though. When it was announced, I was hoping for a grounded samurai story. Something in the vein of Sword of the Stranger. Not something with magic and giant robots.
I read the first tweet and was like yea it’s not fare the dude is in full body armor and the woman is not. Totally wooshed that this person was mad about their choice of both characters until I looked over the post a second time.
I’m willing to bet it’s a bad game. A little controversy to fool idiot’s into buying it without thinking usually works. It serves double duty as it keeps those who really want the best games out of the discussion.
Ubisoft has done it a few times.
Really ramp up the controversy through the marketing, and then release the most non-offensive milquetoast game ever.
Imagine the reality where they actually commit to it like Rockstar, and Far Cry 4-6 aren’t just generic open worlds with simple window dressing.
Ubisoft has pushed the game back multiple times.
Ubisoft.
Ubisoft.
Look at all the shit they’ve sold. They wouldn’t have minded selling you dogshit in a bag - hell, they would have added MTX if you want them to set it on fire.
And this game is still too shit for them.
Outrage Marketing
Yeah Ubi💩 knows that a certain slice of the gaming population will defend this game to its grave no matter how shit it is. Simply because the right hates it so much for the diversity. Also saw it with that last Star Wars game.
Wtf? AC2 and the entire Enzio Series are why AC got a Fan-Base in the first Place. AC1 was a mind blowing gameplay curiosity with lots of rough edges.
The last AC that got me interested was Unity, simply because it felt like AC2 in France (similar Story even).
The last AC that got me thrilled was Black Flag… I mean… it’s legendary!!!
I played black flag but it was also what completely cooled me off to the entire series. it was clear that the actual story of AC was over and they were trying to reanimate a corpse.
more importantly it was entirely unserious to the point that it made me think maybe the devs who worked on it were angry at the higher ups so they made Abstergo into a ubisoft stand-in. Abstergo is literally making assassin’s creed games and trying to manipulate people in pursuit of untold gains? is this a joke? is the game making fun of me for playing it?
whatever I don’t care, never returned to the series and seeing news and reviews never regretted my decision. AC died with Desmond and I was there for it.
The Story of Black Flag was tongue in cheek 100% and very blunt about it… yes… but gameplay wise, Black Flag was definitely the requiem on everything the series had to offer (and more).
And again, you are right. I stopped caring. I wouldn’t even know a new AC is coming if it wasn’t for all the stupid stuff like “I don’t want to play a black man or a Asian woman” or “why is the first playable Asian protagonist black”… the game itself well… why?
But should Ubisoft go down, I would miss their quirky games like Splinter Cell, XIII and even Far Cry…
even there they left no quirk. they found the ac formula to work extremely well and made all their other games into ac-spliced gray sludge. some even before. they removed the best part of rainbow six. splinter cell became unrecognizable. ghost recon became open world or some shit.
apart from ac, thanks to the historical settings, I can’t tell any of their games from another. all their games have the same gameplay loop. all their games have drones. all their games have towers. even their fucking racing game had towers to unlock map areas ffs. they’re just a parody of themselves. in AC4 that was literally the case.
I think Black Flag was so well received because it has the least amount of Assassin’s Creed gameplay in it.
It felt fresh in AC2 but there’s only so many times you can trot out the same exact game with an extra gimmick before tedium sets in.
Nothing highlighted this as starkly as AC3 where I realised that without Ezio I just didn’t care about the story at all.
I’d love AC if they got rid of the scifi bullcrap and just let me enjoy being a pirate/viking/whatever.
I hate the present day bullshit. I wish I could just stay in the animus and skip the rest. I picked up mirage and stopped after an hour. Same shit, new game, the same bugs and glitches that have been present since the first entry in the series.
Black flag was such a great game.
Ac1 is so monotone, why would you prefer it over newer, more polished games?
Asscreed: Mirage just … disappeared?
I haven’t heard anything about it since it was released, was it that boring?
It was a stand alone expansion for Valhalla and didn’t get as much marketing as Shadows. Beyond that, I don’t know.
“Originally envisioned as an expansion for Valhalla, the game was reworked into a standalone title to expand its scope.”
It really disappeared from the public consciousness 😀
Mirage was self contained, sold well, and was well liked by most. Shadows has a millioj controversies and the gameplay loop looks bad. Controcersy gets clicks so Mirage was ignored for more Shadows spam.
There’s also the whole “Ubi refused to allow it on Steam because they didn’t want Valve to eat their cake” side of things. Ubi believed that Mirage would have enough market pull for them to only release it on their internal Ubi store. It also has Denuvo, which many PC players despise. So nobody on PC bothered to play it, and it was only noteworthy for console players. Mirage only recently released on Steam, (I think around Halloween of last year?) but by that point any marketing that was done for it is old news and players have moved on. Ubi seems to have learned their lesson, because Shadows is releasing on Steam at the same time as the rest of the platforms.
I don’t even know this game but aren’t you choosing between a heavily armored warrior and a peasant?
I also haven’t played this game, but I think you can see a sword blade sticking up above the woman’s shoulder? I’d also guess that she is a more agile or stealthy character choice and the man is more heavily armoured or powerful. Just based off video game stereotypes.
Or maybe it’s half fighting game and half farming simulator 🤷
I also haven’t played this game
It hasn’t been released yet so I’d be impressed if you had.
Haha ok. Let me rephrase: I have so little interest in this game I don’t even know what it is
I would actually love a game where you fight and raid during the winter, but come spring it shifts over to a farm sim.
Yasuke is a questionable choice for a protagonist. It breaks with the pattern of inserting a fictional character into the world, you’ll never convince me that his race was not a calculated factor in choosing him, and his status as a samurai (and portrayal in western media) is largely based on a single historian’s work with questionable credibility. Ubisoft has used the Oda family crest without permission (the family still exists today),
used imagery of the Buddha without permission (retracted, may have been the Budai), used a destroyed torii gate as advertising material; and for how much they bleat about historical accuracy, their trailers are chock full of inaccuracies.I do not believe that a character is enhanced or ruined based on their race, but Ubisoft is definitely exploiting it.
I’m not touching the rest of your comment but the Buddhism thing really shows you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. You don’t need “permission” to use imagery of the Buddha, that’s not how it works.
Who do you think can even “give permission” to use imagery of the Buddha anyway, the Siddhartha family? The Dalai Lama? Does he need to phone up the leaders of the other schools for consensus?
The rest of the comment is also barely touching on the subjects. Yasuke was not a samurai, more than likely just a retainer that Oda kept as a sort of trophy or show of wealth. The main issue Japanese people have is the portrayal of Samurai themselves, saying the way Yasuke fights is not right. They also gave Yasuke the family seal, which is a major legal issue even today since the design is copyrighted. The Buddha issue is not the yse itself, but the fact Ubisoft used Chinese depictions of Buddha and not Japanese depictions. They also showed the destroyed torri gate in artwork, based on the Nagasaki gate destroyed by the atom bomb and is also a protected piece. They also showed supposedly Japanese farmworkers in Thai and Myanmar clothing, and others in clothing not seen until the 17th century.
Buddha is not copyrighted / trademarked 🤣
Still can’t believe they put Socrates in AC Odyssey just because he was a popular figure from history. They didn’t even portray him realistically in their video game about solo killing hundreds of enemies.
/s
Oh, right, so all criticisms are invalid because its a game. Just a shitty lowly game, that shitty lowly gamers play. Can’t stand those losers, taking all their childish bullshit seriously. Caring is for pussies.
The conservative idiots are really going to make me hate buy this game aren’t they?
The problem I have with having Yasuke as a main character is as follows:
Assassins Creed at its core has always been about exploring cultures through their most iconic time period, from the perspective of a person from that culture, with an exception of AC3, where the main character’s mother was Native American and father was white, but done so to explore the history around colonialism.
I welcome the idea of an Assassins Creed game within central Africa with an African man/woman as its lead, but I think we can all intuitively understand how wrong it would be to give one of the leading roles to a white character.
I like how we aren’t allowed to be bummed that we dont get to pick someone more representative of that culture. Thats racism right? Or reverse-racism?
Literally my first reaction seeing that picture is, “well thats an odd choice”.
Then pick the Japanese woman…?
Japanese women aren’t capable of representing their culture or what?
I’m sure men and women were treated exactly the same in that period of time in Japan, so surely you have made an excellent point.
Samurai women were expected to train with the naginata. A samurai woman would not be expected to travel and fight, but she would be expected to die protecting her household.
Also, like 16th-17th century samurai were all gay as fuck. Women were for making babies with, the most honorable and respectable love was of that between two men serving as retainers of the same master.
I’d love to play as the “gay as fuck” as you say samurai of the 16th and 17th century, if thats actually true.
I have a wonderful little book that was published in English in the 50’s or 60’s - has a warning that the material is prurient and shouldn’t be in the wrong hands. The speculation in the prologue is that Asians look more feminine (well, they used the term “mongoloid features”) and thus that Asian men are more likely to be attracted to each other. Almost all of the stories end up with the samurai tragically killing themselves, which indicates the “bury your gays” trope predates television (I jest.)
My favorite is of a man encountering a former lover who has been reduced to prostitution and disease. He cares for his lover, and I think they die together. Another incentive to find the damn book.
Unironically, if ubisoft filled their games with interesting bits of history like this I would be far more likely to play them. Also if they’d drop the rpg nonsense.
Oof, I missed this before and obliquely gave you too much credit. I thought you at least cared enough about face to not air your complaint as “but I want to be a boy in this particular video game.”
Just read my other comments in this post. I can’t even be arsed with you lot anymore.
I’m far more interested in what a Japanese person who grew up during the time experienced than someone who was barely there for 3 years. I likely won’t play the game though since assassins creed has been awful, it just seems like a ridiculous character choice. He would make far more sense as an NPC character, I dont recall previous games allowing real life people as the playable characters anyhow.
Japanese women aren’t treated the same as men today, let alone in that time period which is the 15th century …
Yeah, true.
What does that have to do with what was being discussed? They asked for a playable option of someone of the “appropriate ethnicity” to represent the culture (and I’m not even qualified to explain that kettle of worms). There is one, she’s also a woman.
They didn’t ask for a “playable, ethnically-and-culturally Japanese character that is primed to interact with and take advantage of the stupendously patriarchal system of AC Shadow’s era of Japan, i.e. a Japanese man”. Possibly because they realized how bonkers it would be to request that. And a patriarchally-advantaged playable character has hardly core to the identity of AC, to be making a stink now.
But what if I want to play a Japanese man in the Japanese Assassins Creed game?
Then you’re shit-out-of-luck, the same as you would be if you wanted to play Uncharted as Lara Croft.
That wasn’t an option this game happened to provide you.
Nor was it what was being discussed, presumably because most people petutantly wailing “I wanted to play this game but as a guy!” realize how daft that sounds. Just play a different game. It won’t even be that good anyway.
I’ve come to realize I don’t enjoy games that I can’t rp as the character. I just can’t get invested in a story where my character doesn’t look like me. Perfect example is Horizon zero dawn. I loved that game so much. Mechanics and gameplay were great. Visually stunning. And yet I had no problem dropping it for something else. I didn’t even finish it.
It’s not hard to comprehend that as a Hispanic man, I would want to play games with characters that look like me. A simple character creation screen is not hard to make for every game. Let anyone play as any character they want.
Yeah I understand. Still the reason I can’t play Sonic to this day. I’m a yellow hedgehog. Immersion is ruined, everytime.
I know you’re trying to be cute but you gave a terrible example. Sonic is a male character so it works. You can make outlandish comparisons all you want but the majority of Americans feel the same and it’s not going to change my personal opinions on my game choices.
lol it’s very normal behavior to have an easier time identifying with a cartoon hedgehog than a black man.
Fucking weirdo
So you can relate to a blue male hedgehog more than a black man?
So Sonic looks more like you than Aloy?
I actually hate sonic. HZD is an infinitely superior game.
Cool job sidestepping the question.
the majority of Americans feel the same
I don’t believe you. You got a source for that?
Anyway, so you’re saying that gender is a bigger gap for you to cross than species? You, a human, are better able to roleplay as a fucking bipedal hedgehog than a human woman? Maybe you should take a step back and try to figure out why that is.
the majority of Americans feel the same
This is a claim that requires a source.
What games do you play? I don’t know of many games with a male Hispanic lead character and you apparently need to identify with the lead character through ethic and gender based connections, but not species based connections.
Americans aren’t representative of the entire world and to be perfectly frank, I don’t trust the judgement of a majority of Americans anymore, y’all make dumb decisions that fuck up the world.
Mate, cmon you can’t have personal opinions that don’t align with the hive mind or your a bigot.
/s for all the brain dead cunts around here
yes the issue in question is that your opinion is nonconforming not that it’s a straight up bigoted opinion
That’s a you problem.
Personally, I don’t want to play a game with a character creator because it means the story can’t reference the character in any meaningful way.
It’s not a problem for me at all actually. Plenty of games that fit my needs. Just as there’re plenty of games that don’t. For people that are suppose to be open minded some of the people here are extremely close minded.
An inability to empathize is not an artistic preference, it’s a medical condition.
So we’re shaming people with medical conditions now? That’s pretty ableist of you.
yeah besides the visual appearance you’re pretty much a samurai
Absolutely, the only playable game for me as a huge powerful pig man is pygmalion in the Bazaar
It’s not hard to comprehend that as a Hispanic man, I would want to play games with characters that look like me.
A simple character creation screen is not hard to make for every game.
That only works if your character is basically a blank slate story-wise, which just doesn’t work with all stories. That’s fine though, there’s plenty of games out there and not everything is for everyone.
Tbh, even if I live character customization I don’t think it’s easy and affordable at all for a small dev. You have to make sure all aspects of the game adapt to the choice (models, textures, items, SE, writing and so on). Actually, I suppose it can significantly increase the cost of the project.
