Since time immemorial, man has been – understandably – obsessed with personal identity. Across thousands of years, philosophy’s deepest thinkers have grappled with this concept in attempting to deconstruct the human self. More recently, the likes of David Hume, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Jean-Paul Sartre all sought to explain who “we” are, musing on the cast of different personalities that might be presented on any given day. And yet, as fans of the unassuming Warsaw-based studio 11 Bit are currently discovering, arguably the most accessible, 21st-century exploration of this labyrinthine strata of the mind may have emerged last month in a video game.
The Alters has won acclaim for its depiction of the cosmic travails of Jan Dolski, a nondescript builder who finds himself abandoned on an unnamed and fearsomely inhospitable distant planet. Initially, he is alone. But everything changes with the creation of a sheep – the animal whose 1996 real-world cloning acts as the inspiration for the Project Dolly mission and central narrative – via the amalgamation of a prized native element, Rapidium, and some agreeably implausible onboard tech. The result? A collection of Jans, who all have similar but branching life experiences, alongside characters and skills, quirks, and flaws, that are like him but somehow different.
