What is it that makes you human? Approached philosophically, there are numerous possible interpretations: maybe it relates to the body, and the physical manifestations of traits many humans share—but then, what about those born outside of our mold of the “average” human? By that stance, we may turn to the mind, and the unique ways humans are capable of thinking—but from that perspective, we can never be sure that the human mind is truly unique, for in order to conclusively decide such, humans would need to be able to imagine what it would be like to have the mind of something that is not human. So… what is it like to not be human? Trying to define even this is equally problematic, as seen in Thomas Nagel’s What Is It Like to Be a Bat; attempting to answer what it’s like to be a bat leads us to conclude “that there are facts that do not consist in the truth of propositions expressible in human language.” For Nagel, answering what it’s like to be a specific non-human creature is inexplicable—beyond the fact that we humans know this perspective must exist, we can conclude that the difference in the information humans and bats can process is something humans are ill-equipped to comprehend.
As Nagel states, “anyone who has spent some time in an enclosed space with an excited bat knows what it is to encounter a fundamentally alien form of life.” As someone who has never had the pleasure of experiencing such, I turn to BOKURA: Planet as the representation of what it is to simultaneously be both human, and alien; both father and stranger. Within this game of Schrödinger’s Humanity, BOKURA: Planet consistently emphasizes how one’s body and mind may not align with human capability for comprehension to challenge our assumptions of what it means to be human.
BOKURA: Planet presents parallel storylines of players’ characters being inhabited by external minds and subsequently battling as the minds merge. The Orange character (Orange) dies and gets controlled by a parasite, and the Blue character (Blue) has had their original body’s memories overrun by the uploading of Orange‘s protective father (pre-parasite).
In both cases, the original body’s memories start breaking through, and the current inhabitant struggles with their humanity: Orange starts to feel human emotions, and Blue questions whether knowing his memories were not initially his own makes them any less real. As both inhabitants endure the uncertainty between body and mind, they begin to trust and like one another—in stark contrast to the personalities of their bodies’ original hosts.
Beyond the protagonists, BOKURA: Planet also warps the question of humanity through the dog-like creatures one encounters. While playing, my partner and I repeatedly referred to the quadrupedal alien inhabitants as “the dogs.” To advance requires avoiding getting mauled while players use lasers to kill the dogs and collect puzzle pieces. While Blue gets information that the planet contains ancient human civilization somewhere with advanced technology the protagonists hope to find, the ending reveals that the dogs are what humans on this planet have become after a disaster resulting in unpreventable genetic deformity and inbreeding. This twist manipulates players’ innate assumptions about humanity as it relates to the body, directly embodying Nagel’s point that our human inability to fully describe bat or Martian physiology “should not lead us to dismiss as meaningless the claim that bats and Martians have experiences fully comparable in richness of detail to our own.” The dogs’ physical and emotional state are difficult to describe; their systems of perception and action are impossible for the human player to fully understand. Still, despite seemingly alien attributes and existence on a foreign planet, we must debate whether that inherently makes them less human than we are.
As humans, we act with assumptions about what we are, what we aren’t, and what we can do. These assumptions drive certain gameplay behaviors: we see non-humanoid characteristics in the dogs and conclude that killing them is acceptable. We see mind-controllable robots and conclude electrocuting their corpses to press a button is acceptable. We see the unsettling mounds of flesh that might be an alien baby, and conclude literally throwing them about the world to accomplish our mission is acceptable. As Blue and Orange grapple with what defines humanity’s psychology, the planet sits in limbo between what defines humanity’s physicality. Ultimately, we must ponder that if both inhabitants were able to establish mutual trust and shed the animosity of their hosts, perhaps they could be more human by the end than when they started.
