Bioshock Infinite - spoilers and bewilderment

[Toby Frost]

SPOILERS - BIG SPOILERS




Will my brain remain unbroken?

So, the ending. Poor Booker dies in order to prevent himself reaching the baptism, which is the point where he will make the choice to either remain as himself or become Comstock. Or at least it seems that way. After all, if he is going to destroy Comstock in every reality, he has to prevent himself becoming Comstock, and that means dying before the option to be baptised and remake himself as Comstock arises.

At the point of the baptism, Booker can't have already had any children. I say this because Comstock steals/buys Anna from Booker to compensate for the fact that messing with dimensional travel has left him sterile (as stated in a voxificater journal, possibly the one in the Luteces' lab). So does that mean that Anna is born after Booker chooses not to be baptised - ie after the point where Booker-who-isn't-baptised and Comstock-who-is-Booker-post-baptism part company? I think it has to, else Comstock would already have had a child and wouldn't need to take Anna.

It is stated by a Lutece that Elizabeth's powers to control dimensions come from her existing in two dimensions at once, by virtue of her losing her finger whilst being carried by Comstock through the tear. That seems to imply that Elizabeth's powers rely on Comstock carrying her through the tear back to Colombia. Therefore, without Comstock passing through the tear, Elizabeth has no powers. No Comstock, no magic Elizabeth.

So, my question is: when Booker dies at the end of the game, does every possible version of Elizabeth disappear from existence? All but one of the various Elizabeths who drown Booker vanish after he dies, since they can no longer exist in a world where Comstock was not there. Who is the last Elizabeth, wearing the blue dress, who remains? My only conclusion is that she is Anna, grown up, who never met Comstock and was never taken to Colombia at all. But if so, what's Anna doing in the gap between dimensions where the lighthouses are? Since she never met Comstock - as Booker died before the option to become Comstock arose - she can't have the powers deriving from Comstock taking her through the tear. How did she get there?

I am thinking about this way too much.

 

[nubins]

I think the Anna angle was flakey from most of the articles I've seen about the ending. The Anna you knew in the game is gone as are all the other anna's, but if you follow the end credits theres a scene that shows booke rback in his office, there is the sound of a baby crying and he heads for the door to her room. So an Anna still exists.. some people interpret that that he is doomed to make the same mistake, but I dont think that works at all and it just means there will always be one Anna.

Her involvement at the end, is perhaps alittle flakey, but I wasn't sure if the other annas there were actually real, otherwise all of their bookers would need to be there as well.. .wouldnt they?

 

[Lenny]

I've been mulling this over since I finished it on Sunday, and here's my take on the ending:

The Booker at the end, with Anna, is the closest version to our Booker from a subset of the Booker megaverse where Booker decides not to go the baptism at all - the Elizabeths, when drowning our Booker, used their crazy powers to wipe every version of the Booker who went to the baptism from existence (including ours, whose death was more symbolic than anything), thus ensuring that Comstock and Columbia would never come to pass. Every Elizabeth disappears as her Booker/Comstock is wiped out, and that most likely includes the final Elizabeth (as each one disappears with a note on the piano, and the screen goes black with a final note on the piano).

None of those Elizabeths were our Elizabeth, however - you can tell by the fact that the first Elizabeth there, who looks like ours, doesn't wear the pendant we chose for her at Battleship Bay (Booker even says, "Who are you?"). Our Elizabeth never entered the lighthouse, instead choosing to stay in the space in the megaverse between all the different Booker worlds.

Because our Booker was the only Booker to have saved Elizabeth (which we know from the hints dropped by the Lutece twins - we can even guess with some certainty, based on the board showing heads versus tails, that our Booker is the 122nd Booker to try), it logically follows that our Elizabeth is the only one who is fully in control of her powers. Like the Lutece twins, who cheated death, Elizabeth is a quantum being, capable of being anywhere and everywhere. As such, because she can remove herself from the Columbia timelines and still exist, it stands to reason that she could exist continue to exist after wiping out the the possibility of her existence.

Far more learned minds than mine are required for it to be fully explained, but from my understanding, multiverse theory (as this is what the BioShock universe is: a multiverse - it's not a fixed timeline, or a dynamic timeline, but a collection of alternate timelines) means that any changes to the timeline creates a divergent timeline different from the first. You can go back and kill your grandparents, creating a new timeline in which you will never be born, but you still exist within the timeline you have entered, you just can't return to your original timeline.

Bit of a mind-twister, all that. So in short, my belief is that the Booker and Anna are not ours, but rather a Booker who decided not to go to the baptism, and that Elizabeth still exists, as she was able to use her crazy powers to separate herself from the Columbia timelines before they were wiped out.

 

[nubins]

My understanding is that the story ends with them taking Booker back to the first decision that created comstock - the baptism. By taking him back to that point and changing it, comstock never existed, our version of booker also never existed and .. sadly.. our Elizabeth also never existed, as she was a product of that decision as much as anything else was.

The little added bit at the end with the crying baby in bookers apartment is to add a.. "but does it happen again anyway?" question, that is all the rage with time paradox based stories.

To be honest, I was hugely dissapointed in Bioshock Infinite and felt it wasnt a par on the original Bioshocks storyline, so much so that Rapture's inclusion in Bioshock Infinite, whilst initially a thing of great interest to me, became a thing of irritation. I disliked the BI storyline so much that I felt including Rapture there also tainted its much superior story.

I also felt BI was much more sterile and less credible throughout. The only thing from the game that I thought was genuinely good and memorable, was Elizabeth.

 

[Pwaa]

I think the Anna angle was flakey from most of the articles I've seen about the ending. The Anna you knew in the game is gone as are all the other anna's, but if you follow the end credits theres a scene that shows booke rback in his office, there is the sound of a baby crying and he heads for the door to her room. So an Anna still exists.. some people interpret that that he is doomed to make the same mistake, but I dont think that works at all and it just means there will always be one Anna.

Her involvement at the end, is perhaps alittle flakey, but I wasn't sure if the other annas there were actually real, otherwise all of their bookers would need to be there as well.. .wouldnt they?

I took it as meaning that its not necessarily that he will make the same mistake, but that Anna will be taken by force should he choose not to give her up, so the situation will always arise if he exists at all. The lighthouse bit made me assume that the two dimensions we play in in the game are far from the only two in existence, there is infinite, so inevitably there will always be a similar dimension, with a Booker, Comstock and Anna in a similar situation, so its always going to be a loop.



Did anyone here play through Burial at Sea? I wasn't sure whether to take it as canon or a spin-off. I won't ruin it here with spoilers, but lets say the ending left me with more questions than answers really. I also felt that mixing it with Rapture too much sort of nullifies the first one, which i didn't like. Still, playing in Rapture again for a brief stint was very nice.

 

[Aloreth]

Reading through this thread has confused me all over again. I thought this was behind me damnit.

Just a quick question, can anyone advise whether the DLC is any good?

 

[Lenny]

Clash in the Clouds is essentially a wave-based combat game - if you liked the combat mechanics, and enjoy fighting huge waves of enemies, then I guess this one is worth it.

We're still waiting for the second Burial at Sea episode. The first was apparently alright, but not great, and the general consensus seems to be to wait for the second episode and see if both together turn out to be something incredible and unmissable.

 

[Aloreth]

Ok thanks - might wait until its nice and cheap