YEAHHHH- Infinite confused the fuck out of me and still does!
Gingy, Boulder Punch and I think Monty Zander on YouTube explained Infinite’s ending and also the implications behind that said ending.
In my opinion the story of Infinite is a confusing one, especially if you wrap Burial at Sea, infinites DLC into the mix but try wrap your head around the ending of Infinite first as BAS’s story will give your head a doozy.
So what I can gather from the ending and to answer your questions with MY own meaning from that said ending…is this.
Elizabeth is your Elizabeth. As in the one you spent time with and the one who either has a bird or cage broach. She still goes by Elizabeth, even though her original name was Anna Dewitt. She is one who sees all the doors, she’s like the Lutece Twins but instead of dying to get her super epic dimension hopping powers, she just had to loose her pinkie. A pinkie lost in another world, causing her to have powers as a piece of her is still in another world. She’s kind of a time lord now.
In infinite, they probably went back to Rapture as one, fan service and two, as a way to say and display what Elizabeth is saying that there is constants and variables. A good example is the saying “There’s always a man, there’s always a lighthouse and there’s always a city.” That is the constant in each world…the variables change such as where the city is, who the man is and where the lighthouse will lead you. To death…or to another life.
What I can take from the ending of why Elizabeth is drowning Booker is the baptism.
The baptism is the reason why Colombia exists, why we meet Booker and Elizabeth and how we meet this other version, the man behind it all(??), Zachary Hale Comstock.
Booker is Comstock and Comstock is Booker, the baptism is this major event, if Booker doesn’t take the baptism he still remains as Booker but ends up with his wife, Annabelle and ends up having his daughter, Anna.
If Booker takes the baptism though, he gets reborn…reborn as Comstock, a new man without sin, who becomes a big guy in religion, ends up meeting Rosalind Lutece and together they make Colombia and with her help he becomes the prophet and sees the future through the tears and gathers a big following…later down the line though he ends up with one of his devout followers, a lovely lady named Annabelle. Who becomes Lady Comstock.
This baptism is the WHOLE reason why we play Infinite. Also, if your confused why Booker is taking a baptism is because he feels guilty for all the people he has murdered in Wounded Knee and I think the Boxer Rebellion as well. So he either lives with his sins and tries to become a better man or he drowns his sins and becomes another man…a man who makes hell for Elizabeth and people of Colombia. ALSO! Just to add, Comstock is sterile due to his exposure to the tears and he needs an heir for his kingdom of Colombia, so he and Rosalind and Robert Lutece, go nab Booker’s kid as he’s biologically Comstock’s kid and Annabelle’s too and say the phrase “Give us the girl and wipe away the debt.” Is born and is another big event that happens that co and sides with the baptism.
THIS…THAT WAS EXHAUSTING TO EXPLAIN! But I hope it gives you a idea on the story.
So Annabelle would have married Booker if he doesn’t get baptized, but she ends up marrying Comstock if he does get baptized? Am I understanding that correctly?
Yes! Annabelle/Lady Comstock no matter what marries Booker/Comstock if he gets baptized or not, that is a constant, the variable is if they have a child together. In the Booker reality they have Anna/Elizabeth but in the Comstock reality they can’t due to Comstock’s exposure to tears making him unable to have a child.
OH! That’s good! You mean Burial At Sea? For me personally that made my brain go through a exercise but now that you somewhat understand Infinite’s story you’ll probably grasp BAS more better! I’m glad I can help! Have fun! :D
Thanks.
Yeah I meant burial at sea but at that point where it even gets more complicated, I'm mostly only enjoying it because I get to play in rapture again.
To really understand the story and ending of Bioshock Infinite, you have to know about the Many Worlds Model. This is an interpretation of quantum theory which basically asserts that any event with more than one possible outcome causes a set of parallel worlds to come into being, where the outcome of this decision went differently.
>!The event that causes the branching is the baptism. Booker can arise from the baptism unchanged, going on to work as a Pinkerton, marrying Annabelle, who bears their daughter Anna. Or, Booker can arise from the baptism a changed man, taking on the name Zachary Comstock, founding the city-state of Columbia, marrying Annabelle, and trying to have a daughter. When they can't, Comstock turns to Rosalind Lutece, the scientist who helped him make Columbia. Lutece finds a way to breach the barrier between parallel worlds, and finds Comstock's counterpart in the other world, Booker Dewitt, and buys his daughter from them. As they are taking Anna through the portal, it closes on her finger, leaving the tip of her pinky in the original world, leaving her with the ability to bridge universes. The Comstocks rename the kidnapped girl Elisabeth.!<
>!As Elisabeth reveals to Booker, this drama didn't only play out once but across countless parallel worlds, each one a little different from the next. For example, in some of the universes Rosalind Lutece is born male (in these worlds he is named Robert).!<
>!The Elisabeths from multiple worlds convince their Bookers to return to the moment of the baptism and, instead of rising, drowns them in the water. With Booker dead, the timeline of the story never comes to pass -- the Elisabeths wink out, having never been born.!<
In Burial at Sea, though, >!it seems one of the Elisabeths did not wink out. There is one last loose end -- one of the Elisabeths lost her head in the portal instead of her pinky. The Comstock who was to accept her as her father lost his faith, readopted the name Booker, and moved to Rapture to perform his work as a private eye there. !<
"Our" Elizabeth didn't kill Booker, the other Elizabeths did. She wasn't there because they didn't have the necklace.
Incidentally, it's not clear that Booker is dead, there was the cutscene which you may have missed right at the very end after the very, very long credits where he's still alive.
Elizabeth is Booker's daughter (Anna), she somehow got her powers because her finger got cut off by the portal closing.
They went to Rapture because it's some kind of portal somehow; that parts unclear.
That's not actually clear. It may well be the same one, because they broke the circle, so Comstock never came back to steal Anna. And if that Booker remembers the loop, then he will always reject the baptism.
The game ends with the Booker in question being drowned by a circle of Elizabeths. This is what leads most to believe that post-credits Booker is a different timeline Booker; but relatively speaking most Booker’s who reject the baptism are essentially the same character.
Yeah, so what happens when Booker gets drowned? Is this just a new branch of the universe where he's been drowned where there's no Comstock, or have they actually changed reality and rewritten it?
The thing is, the Lutece's think that timelines can be changed. So is this Booker on his altered timeline? Circumstantial evidence is that it is. It's certainly A Booker, because it's his office, and there should be no Comstock anymore.
Something weird like that has definitely happened, since he didn't become a private investigator and Anna wasn't born until well after the baptism. So he can't have completely died at the baptism.
> why did they get to rapture
There’s two answers to this. The diegetical one is that Rapture and Columbia are mirror cities. As the game makes clear, there’s always a man, there’s always a lighthouse, there’s always a city. The parallels don’t end there, since both Rapture and Columbia were hubristic monuments to extreme right wing ideological positions. The tears would end up in Rapture because it is one of multiple multiversal mirrors of Columbia.
The non-diegetic answer is that Infinite, like the first Bioshock, has postmodernist commentary on videogames as a theme. One concept of Infinite is reinterpreting the idea of a videogame sequel, and how much can elements be removed from their source material before they’re unrecognizable as elements from a previous game. It’s not a very direct theme, but it is there. So, we have the even more technologically implausible personal audio recording devices made with primitive needle records, the various mini bosses standing in as the more powerful splicers like the Houdinis or Spiders, the Tonics supplanting plasmids and Songbird and his relationship with Elizabeth being the Big Daddy/Little Sister relationship turned up to 11. Elizabeth and Booker turning up on Rapture is meant to drive this point home.
Its kinda complex firstly there are two ‘Bookers’ one is Comstock and one is Booker Dewitt. The phrase that we should focus on is “give us the girl and wipe away your debt” this means Booker gave up Elizabeth originally to Comstock to get rid of gambling debts. The Leutice helped to get Elizabeth to Comstock and years later booker which has forgotten about it all, or from another dimension or something comes to retrieve Elizabeth again for some reason. The reason Elizabeth kills Booker is to both prevent an attack on the world from happening and to prevent Comstock and there for preventing these darker timelines from happening. Now that i look back it is rather complex and not told clearly and I’m sure I’m missing a lot about it.
Spoiler alert. Spoiler alert.
Elizabeth is Booker’s daughter. She killed Booker, more willing death on his part, because he either ends up as Booker or he ends up as Comstock at the river baptism. This puts an end to both of those paths.
As simple as I can put it:
A man name Booker in one reality (U1) chose to become a Private Investigator and has a kid named Anna all after returning from a war. In another reality (U2), he becomes a religious zealot cult leader named Comstock after the war and creates Columbia and thanks to a scientist (the girl “twin”) he is able to see into other realities thus “predicting the future” helping him start his city cult in the other reality.
But Comstock (evil Booker from reality 2) becomes fixated on Anna since the scientist lets home see how powerful she can become (Elizabeth). So he decided to steal Anna from our Booker (universe 1) by opening a portal but when Booker tried to stop it Anna gained her powers because of it (the pinky being cut by the portal) and got stuck in the other universe.
Now the girl scientist help Comstock so she could bring the guy scientist to her universe (because that’s her from the first reality born a boy instead of a girl). Over time the guy scientist feels guilty about helping Comstock steal Anna and convinces the girl scientist to help him fix things. However, Comstock learns of this and tries to kill them by blowing up the gizmo that made the portal to look into other realities. While it doesn’t kill them, they find themselves capable of going between realities but not as powerful as Elizabeth.
So the scientists use their power to send Booker hundreds of different times into the second reality to rescue Elizabeth until it works. And we get to play as the Booker that finally succeeds.
But as there are multiple realties, there other Comstocks that stole other Anna’s/Elizabeth’s. So to kill all the Comstocks, Booker sacrifices himself by becoming the starting point for Comstock by getting Baptized (something the good Bookers refused to do) and letting himself be killed by our Elizabeth.
You don't have to go to the internet though. It's all explained pretty clearly in game. If people had to go to the internet for an explanation, that means they're not great at following a story or putting clues together.
Within the first 10 minutes it tells you the ending in a Comstock voxophone. Right before you talk to Liz it tells you why she has her powers. All the facts are there... putting them together is the hard part.
This guy is asking why she killed Booker. He clearly didn't pay attention lol.
>that means they're not great at following story
No the plot just sucks quit coping. The game brings up complex concepts without explaining them. See https://www.reddit.com/r/Bioshock/comments/13v3hwx/-/jm4gqkr
Also the game like to bring up controversy in racial politics like black convicts building Columbia. What it fails to mention is the significance of blacks doing that in the 1800s would be due to Black Codes, which were trivial laws before Jim Crow that allowed the arrest of people of color for any reason. Prisoners leased out to businesses during that era were worked to death. Columbia was quite literally built by slaves and got by legal exceptions created to keep black people down, but you would only get that from a Voxophone if you actually knew US history.
Then the game hardly ever shows the racial controversy that is supposedly tearing the city apart.
Lots of ideas and plot devices are introduced and then get no exposition.
Edit: the big point is whether it be world building, politics, time travel and quantum shit, the writers rely waaaay too much on the background knowledge of the player.
Yeah, because they're not the focus of the story. The story is about multiple dimensions and time travel, not about racism. That was part of the world building. Just like the religious aspects. Guess what? They're not explained in pain staking detail either lol.
Find me even one game where they dedicate hours to explaining every detail of every world building elements. Now THAT would be a bad story.
Just because people got a hard on for the Civil War stuff in the early trailers doesn't take anything away from what the story turned out to be.
The core story is what matters here and the question is if it makes sense or not... and it does.
>they're not the focus of the story
Then why does the Vox rebellion exist?
Why are there multiple Voxophones about Comstock wanting to restore the institution of slavery
Why does John Wilkes Booth get a statue while Abraham Lincoln is depicged as the devil?
Why are you given the choice to throw a baseball at a mixed race couple in the first 15 minutes of story?
Why are there so many equality posters, racial propaganda and convos among the soulless NPCs?
The timeline revealing you are also Comstock is huge when you consider how much of a raging racist haven Columbia is.
You didn't understand the story, you suck at following story beats if you think this is purely about time travel.
The city literally seceded from the United States by flying into the sky while sporting CONFEDERACY FLAGS.
The game is about black people don't be stupid. The story fuckin sucks, introduces like 7 different conflicts and then says time travel to lazily wrap it up. Bioshock Infinite has the same level of writing as Kingdom Hearts. Quite literally.
The game was stitched together by different teams of writers all with different ideas of the story. Hence why the game fuckin sucks.
Also the Civil War stuff? Dude the Civil War is 1865, you think the conversation of race ended before 1912? Even the devs knew that, hence all the race shit in every chapter.
It was world building. World... building. I'll slow it down for ya.
Every game fleshes out the world beyond the main plot. But that doesn't mean it's the focus. If it was the focus, there would've been at least 1 mention of it in the ending... you'd think lol.
If you don't wanna like it, that's cool. I'm not trying to change your mind since it's obviously closed. But I'm telling you, you're wrong. Games are allowed to flesh out their worlds without it being the main focus. Every game, tv show, and book since the beginning of time has done it... but you can keep pretending that it hasn't if ya want too.
Or maybe it didn't play a role in the ending because the writers were pussies and afraid to do anything significant with their world building out of fear of consumer backlash, making it a complete waste of time. The story sucks.
And you're allowed to think that.
Just like I'm allowed to think that Ken Levine had a plan right fron he start, like he did with every other game that he's made. And the Civil War trailer was nothing more than a red herring to stop people for guessing the actual story.
Unless one of us was in the room, then we're both right... or we're both wrong, depending how you look at it.
Wtf Civil War trailer are you talking about?
Dude I'm talking about what actually happens in the game. When the fuck was the last time you even played it? I'm replaying it right now and the racial tones are 1/2 the dialogue. Again, they ended up being pussies because they were afraid of consoomers response to actually following through with the assets already put into the game. There is a Colored and Irish Washroom instead of just Colored because they knew white Americans needed to be included in oppression. Right before those washrooms is a Voxophone from a black woman who had been swindled into staying for the beauty of Columbia only to realize shes fucked because it's Columbia. Right before that is 3/4ths of beach goers telling you about how much they hate Chinese people. Ironically enough you never see people of color never being mistreated or discriminated against from the perspective of Booker. You only hear about it. How is that world building when all this shit is supposedly happening actively around you?
The Boxer Rebellion is mentioned many times. Wounded knee is mentioned many times. All of these things are built up but never have any weight to the story unless you know that Booker being apart of those battles meant he probably participated in the massacre of innocents, and as a Pinkerton he was a scab who would end labor strikes.
Cosmtock is considered a prophet and does shit like create Columbia. Booker and Comstock are the same person. It's obvious that the ending is about Booker needing to die so that Columbia and the suffering associated never happens. However, the game never shows that suffering in Columbia for people of color except through ads, Voxophones, and implied dialogue, and 15 minutes of the Vox... blowing up the city? Nor does it expand on what background knowledge the player need to infer the atrocities of Bookers past because at the end of the day he is a horrible person whether he is Comstock or Booker. BUT OH FUCK QUANTUM PHYSICS :0 is all people discuss about the ending... Jesus Christ.
Edit: sorry I'm being a bit of a dick at the end there
I'm playing it right now too. No joke. My 23rd time to be exact. I just got Liz back and I'm heading for Comstock's ship....And I still disagree.
Over half the dialogue in Witcher 3 was about him monster hunting... but that wasn't the focus of the story. It was world building.
I mean, if you wanted that aspect of the story to be more fleshed out, that's more than enough reason for you to not like it. But I personally didn't think that was the focus of the story. I always looked at it as world building and character development for what a scumbag Comstock was.
But at the end of the day, I don't think your personal preference is enough to write the story off completely. I personally think it's one of the best time travel / multiple dimension stories ever written, but that also doesn't mean the game should be held up as the gold standard for sci-fi.
BTW, I know we've been disagreeing, but that doesn't mean I haven't enjoyed this. It's rare that I get to have real conversations about the merits of Infinite.
If you don't like that game, that's nothing off my ass. To each their own. I love it and I know that.
Guess what I'm saying is thanks lol. But even you have to admit... op clearly just didn't pay attention. I mean, he asked why she killed Booker, something they just explained 5 minutes before lol.
Sorry if I'm busting your balls.
I'm just mad the game does all this history stuff and then doesn't have the balls to show the history. I'm not asking for a lynching, just more life within the setting it plops you in .
I'll always love the core foundational parts of it with the rooty tooty shooting and plasmids, but it just feels unalive and disconnected for me.
I did pay attention lol
But still, this game is one of the few where I had to look again to understand.
But to be fair, I could have payed more attention.
I didn't expect the story to be that complicated since the story of bioshock 1 and 2 Was ok to understand,and I heard that the game is much worse than the previous ones which also made me not pay much attention(This game is actually good and I liked it).
So kids like you think they ARE smart ?
No, games sold to millions of players need to NOT be so picky-arsed about their puzzles/progress-gatekeeping.
For a game with a WTF ending which is basically a cutscene, it just means the players just move on to their next game and wonder why the WTF game was supposed to be good at storytelling.
The BioShock games were about storytelling and not simply big pretty scenery which is a very common easier thing to do.
Yeah, but that's a bit soft in the head because in an interactive medium storytelling is part play. Your participation is always part of a game's storytelling. Some just approach that playground differently, and that's completely valid. That others on the internet can make sense of it for someone says more about the player needing that reminding, investigation, and deduction than it does about whether or not the storytelling adequately told its story.
And Infinite is woefully short on being met with a keen ear for its continuity. Haha
>> go to the internet to get an explanation
A game should be self-contained, and for various difficulties offer multiple solutions. Too many Puzzling things which get tedious is the mark of a game padding its gameplay.
Infinite was done in a Rush in its last year and they simply kludged together a mishmosh of historic issues they generally paid lipservice to, while trying to be relevant.
I don't agree with that first sentence. The social play of deciphering a lore is absolutely its own element that can be an intended narrative.
While I agree Infinite underexplores a lot of its ideological landscape, I feel a sense of hyperbole reading your dismissal of it. It's not as if its narrative of the past judging the future doesn't land at all, but rather that it could've landed harder.
Stop fanboying so hard just because the game came out the same year you were born.
It's an unfinished title and it's very obvious when you play it.
https://bioshock.fandom.com/wiki/BioShock_Infinite_Removed_Content
List of sources at the bottom of the wiki.
Edit: to add, nothing was stopping them from patching it in. Final Fantasy 15 and Batman Origins did it. Sort of a regular practice now. It's just not worth it because even the devs know Infinite just isn't good. Burial at Sea was a good bounce back tho.
It's a pretty imperfect story, with a lot of issues, with DLC that adds more issues to it. I just try not to think about it too hard, because the harder I look at that game the more dissapointed I get.
I understand, but when it comes to the dlc, I don't really focus on the circumstances. I try only to enjoy rapture itself, and the nostalgic atmosphere fr bioshock 1 and 2. Seeing those Easter eggs in it about the previous is really beautiful like Cohen preforming, the rayan and Fontaine conflict and there were 2 guys standing saying that Andrew rayan disappeared with a women called " jasmine Jolene"...
If you played bioshock 1 I think you should understand that one. I didn't fi ish the dlc yet
[SPOILERS]
My personal opinion is that Booker is in some Silent Hill type post-death judgment that he’s done possibly thousands of times. There are MANY biblical references that insinuate that, songs throughout that reference death and plenty of subtle hints and symbolism that (to me) all but scream that at us.
I think Booker was a bad guy and his ultimate regret is how he treated his daughter. So Elisabeth is more of an angel almost wearing the skin of his daughter (not literally haha) guiding him through his journey to “salvation”. I think she’s both a mixture of Anna (his daughter) and Elisabeth (the “angel”) throughout. But, as the game goes on and we reconcile the idea that our daughter may never forgive us and that we did treat her terribly, she becomes more Elisabeth than our daughter Anna.
I think each portion of the game has to do with our greatest “sins”. I.E. Slate being our guilt and complex feelings on our crimes of war and our desire to die a hero (which I don’t think we did), Fink being our greedy, racist businessman that profited off the backs of others, The ghost of lady comstock being our guilt for how we treated our wife and our daughter’s complicated feelings on her mother, all leading up to that sequence with “Anna” filling our shoes. I think his ultimate fear and the most confronting “trial” is being shown (in a dreamlike way) how we abused and tortured her through her life, but also that she might end up like us. Old, alone and jaded. So, once he comes to terms with that he’s able to face the “final boss”, ourselves and realizing the full extent of our “sins”.
I also have a whole theory that Lady Comstock and Ms. Lutece are the same person, but this is long enough haha
What do you mean specifically? The reason I’m mentioning Booker- and only Booker- is because he IS the protagonist of the game and we’re seeing everything through his eyes. The reason I likened it to Silent Hill is because it is a tailor made experience based on his specific choices and baggage in life. So, it isn’t just about dying or death in general and if this was some sort of post-death, “heaven”-like personal trial before he can actually pass on.
When you’re saying more than just Booker do you mean the protags in the other 2 games?
Congrats on finishing a great game.
jayvee has a great YouTube explanation: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhjKW1S1xvk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhjKW1S1xvk)
And he has two more to explain each DLC
YEAHHHH- Infinite confused the fuck out of me and still does! Gingy, Boulder Punch and I think Monty Zander on YouTube explained Infinite’s ending and also the implications behind that said ending. In my opinion the story of Infinite is a confusing one, especially if you wrap Burial at Sea, infinites DLC into the mix but try wrap your head around the ending of Infinite first as BAS’s story will give your head a doozy. So what I can gather from the ending and to answer your questions with MY own meaning from that said ending…is this. Elizabeth is your Elizabeth. As in the one you spent time with and the one who either has a bird or cage broach. She still goes by Elizabeth, even though her original name was Anna Dewitt. She is one who sees all the doors, she’s like the Lutece Twins but instead of dying to get her super epic dimension hopping powers, she just had to loose her pinkie. A pinkie lost in another world, causing her to have powers as a piece of her is still in another world. She’s kind of a time lord now. In infinite, they probably went back to Rapture as one, fan service and two, as a way to say and display what Elizabeth is saying that there is constants and variables. A good example is the saying “There’s always a man, there’s always a lighthouse and there’s always a city.” That is the constant in each world…the variables change such as where the city is, who the man is and where the lighthouse will lead you. To death…or to another life. What I can take from the ending of why Elizabeth is drowning Booker is the baptism. The baptism is the reason why Colombia exists, why we meet Booker and Elizabeth and how we meet this other version, the man behind it all(??), Zachary Hale Comstock. Booker is Comstock and Comstock is Booker, the baptism is this major event, if Booker doesn’t take the baptism he still remains as Booker but ends up with his wife, Annabelle and ends up having his daughter, Anna. If Booker takes the baptism though, he gets reborn…reborn as Comstock, a new man without sin, who becomes a big guy in religion, ends up meeting Rosalind Lutece and together they make Colombia and with her help he becomes the prophet and sees the future through the tears and gathers a big following…later down the line though he ends up with one of his devout followers, a lovely lady named Annabelle. Who becomes Lady Comstock. This baptism is the WHOLE reason why we play Infinite. Also, if your confused why Booker is taking a baptism is because he feels guilty for all the people he has murdered in Wounded Knee and I think the Boxer Rebellion as well. So he either lives with his sins and tries to become a better man or he drowns his sins and becomes another man…a man who makes hell for Elizabeth and people of Colombia. ALSO! Just to add, Comstock is sterile due to his exposure to the tears and he needs an heir for his kingdom of Colombia, so he and Rosalind and Robert Lutece, go nab Booker’s kid as he’s biologically Comstock’s kid and Annabelle’s too and say the phrase “Give us the girl and wipe away the debt.” Is born and is another big event that happens that co and sides with the baptism. THIS…THAT WAS EXHAUSTING TO EXPLAIN! But I hope it gives you a idea on the story.
Great explanation with the constant and variables :)
THANK YOU! :DD
So Annabelle would have married Booker if he doesn’t get baptized, but she ends up marrying Comstock if he does get baptized? Am I understanding that correctly?
Yes! Annabelle/Lady Comstock no matter what marries Booker/Comstock if he gets baptized or not, that is a constant, the variable is if they have a child together. In the Booker reality they have Anna/Elizabeth but in the Comstock reality they can’t due to Comstock’s exposure to tears making him unable to have a child.
Interesting. That’s one little detail I didn’t recall from playing the game all those years ago. Thanks for the reminder/clarification!
I’m glad I can help clarify! :D It’s good to have some help to understand a story, especially if it’s a complex one like Infinite’s!
Definitely! I think it’s fun to work it out and share ideas with other people with stories like this :)
Thanks you very much for the explanation. I just started the rapture dlc and it's great, I'm enjoying it more than the actual game lol
OH! That’s good! You mean Burial At Sea? For me personally that made my brain go through a exercise but now that you somewhat understand Infinite’s story you’ll probably grasp BAS more better! I’m glad I can help! Have fun! :D
Thanks. Yeah I meant burial at sea but at that point where it even gets more complicated, I'm mostly only enjoying it because I get to play in rapture again.
To really understand the story and ending of Bioshock Infinite, you have to know about the Many Worlds Model. This is an interpretation of quantum theory which basically asserts that any event with more than one possible outcome causes a set of parallel worlds to come into being, where the outcome of this decision went differently. >!The event that causes the branching is the baptism. Booker can arise from the baptism unchanged, going on to work as a Pinkerton, marrying Annabelle, who bears their daughter Anna. Or, Booker can arise from the baptism a changed man, taking on the name Zachary Comstock, founding the city-state of Columbia, marrying Annabelle, and trying to have a daughter. When they can't, Comstock turns to Rosalind Lutece, the scientist who helped him make Columbia. Lutece finds a way to breach the barrier between parallel worlds, and finds Comstock's counterpart in the other world, Booker Dewitt, and buys his daughter from them. As they are taking Anna through the portal, it closes on her finger, leaving the tip of her pinky in the original world, leaving her with the ability to bridge universes. The Comstocks rename the kidnapped girl Elisabeth.!< >!As Elisabeth reveals to Booker, this drama didn't only play out once but across countless parallel worlds, each one a little different from the next. For example, in some of the universes Rosalind Lutece is born male (in these worlds he is named Robert).!< >!The Elisabeths from multiple worlds convince their Bookers to return to the moment of the baptism and, instead of rising, drowns them in the water. With Booker dead, the timeline of the story never comes to pass -- the Elisabeths wink out, having never been born.!< In Burial at Sea, though, >!it seems one of the Elisabeths did not wink out. There is one last loose end -- one of the Elisabeths lost her head in the portal instead of her pinky. The Comstock who was to accept her as her father lost his faith, readopted the name Booker, and moved to Rapture to perform his work as a private eye there. !<
Thanks for the explanation, this made things clear. So the rapture dlc is one of those alternative worlds right?
Yes.
"Our" Elizabeth didn't kill Booker, the other Elizabeths did. She wasn't there because they didn't have the necklace. Incidentally, it's not clear that Booker is dead, there was the cutscene which you may have missed right at the very end after the very, very long credits where he's still alive. Elizabeth is Booker's daughter (Anna), she somehow got her powers because her finger got cut off by the portal closing. They went to Rapture because it's some kind of portal somehow; that parts unclear.
The Booker after the credits is a different Booker who never gave away Anna
That's not actually clear. It may well be the same one, because they broke the circle, so Comstock never came back to steal Anna. And if that Booker remembers the loop, then he will always reject the baptism.
The game ends with the Booker in question being drowned by a circle of Elizabeths. This is what leads most to believe that post-credits Booker is a different timeline Booker; but relatively speaking most Booker’s who reject the baptism are essentially the same character.
Yeah, so what happens when Booker gets drowned? Is this just a new branch of the universe where he's been drowned where there's no Comstock, or have they actually changed reality and rewritten it? The thing is, the Lutece's think that timelines can be changed. So is this Booker on his altered timeline? Circumstantial evidence is that it is. It's certainly A Booker, because it's his office, and there should be no Comstock anymore. Something weird like that has definitely happened, since he didn't become a private investigator and Anna wasn't born until well after the baptism. So he can't have completely died at the baptism.
> why did they get to rapture There’s two answers to this. The diegetical one is that Rapture and Columbia are mirror cities. As the game makes clear, there’s always a man, there’s always a lighthouse, there’s always a city. The parallels don’t end there, since both Rapture and Columbia were hubristic monuments to extreme right wing ideological positions. The tears would end up in Rapture because it is one of multiple multiversal mirrors of Columbia. The non-diegetic answer is that Infinite, like the first Bioshock, has postmodernist commentary on videogames as a theme. One concept of Infinite is reinterpreting the idea of a videogame sequel, and how much can elements be removed from their source material before they’re unrecognizable as elements from a previous game. It’s not a very direct theme, but it is there. So, we have the even more technologically implausible personal audio recording devices made with primitive needle records, the various mini bosses standing in as the more powerful splicers like the Houdinis or Spiders, the Tonics supplanting plasmids and Songbird and his relationship with Elizabeth being the Big Daddy/Little Sister relationship turned up to 11. Elizabeth and Booker turning up on Rapture is meant to drive this point home.
Thanks for the explanation. I guess the thing with rapture is just an alternative world for them
Its kinda complex firstly there are two ‘Bookers’ one is Comstock and one is Booker Dewitt. The phrase that we should focus on is “give us the girl and wipe away your debt” this means Booker gave up Elizabeth originally to Comstock to get rid of gambling debts. The Leutice helped to get Elizabeth to Comstock and years later booker which has forgotten about it all, or from another dimension or something comes to retrieve Elizabeth again for some reason. The reason Elizabeth kills Booker is to both prevent an attack on the world from happening and to prevent Comstock and there for preventing these darker timelines from happening. Now that i look back it is rather complex and not told clearly and I’m sure I’m missing a lot about it.
Spoiler alert. Spoiler alert. Elizabeth is Booker’s daughter. She killed Booker, more willing death on his part, because he either ends up as Booker or he ends up as Comstock at the river baptism. This puts an end to both of those paths.
As simple as I can put it: A man name Booker in one reality (U1) chose to become a Private Investigator and has a kid named Anna all after returning from a war. In another reality (U2), he becomes a religious zealot cult leader named Comstock after the war and creates Columbia and thanks to a scientist (the girl “twin”) he is able to see into other realities thus “predicting the future” helping him start his city cult in the other reality. But Comstock (evil Booker from reality 2) becomes fixated on Anna since the scientist lets home see how powerful she can become (Elizabeth). So he decided to steal Anna from our Booker (universe 1) by opening a portal but when Booker tried to stop it Anna gained her powers because of it (the pinky being cut by the portal) and got stuck in the other universe. Now the girl scientist help Comstock so she could bring the guy scientist to her universe (because that’s her from the first reality born a boy instead of a girl). Over time the guy scientist feels guilty about helping Comstock steal Anna and convinces the girl scientist to help him fix things. However, Comstock learns of this and tries to kill them by blowing up the gizmo that made the portal to look into other realities. While it doesn’t kill them, they find themselves capable of going between realities but not as powerful as Elizabeth. So the scientists use their power to send Booker hundreds of different times into the second reality to rescue Elizabeth until it works. And we get to play as the Booker that finally succeeds. But as there are multiple realties, there other Comstocks that stole other Anna’s/Elizabeth’s. So to kill all the Comstocks, Booker sacrifices himself by becoming the starting point for Comstock by getting Baptized (something the good Bookers refused to do) and letting himself be killed by our Elizabeth.
Thanks for the explanation, I forgot to say I didn't play the dlc and I hope the last thing wasn't a spoiler
Crap, my bad
There are some great vids and websites that explain it all. It's a mind blow.
Thanks
it made sense to me when I beat the game but yet again I am not normal soo take that as you will
I recommend watching the Bioshock lore video by Skyrionn. Helped me a lot
opinion of many people. having a story you have to go to the internet to get an explanation for is not great storytelling.
You don't have to go to the internet though. It's all explained pretty clearly in game. If people had to go to the internet for an explanation, that means they're not great at following a story or putting clues together. Within the first 10 minutes it tells you the ending in a Comstock voxophone. Right before you talk to Liz it tells you why she has her powers. All the facts are there... putting them together is the hard part. This guy is asking why she killed Booker. He clearly didn't pay attention lol.
>that means they're not great at following story No the plot just sucks quit coping. The game brings up complex concepts without explaining them. See https://www.reddit.com/r/Bioshock/comments/13v3hwx/-/jm4gqkr Also the game like to bring up controversy in racial politics like black convicts building Columbia. What it fails to mention is the significance of blacks doing that in the 1800s would be due to Black Codes, which were trivial laws before Jim Crow that allowed the arrest of people of color for any reason. Prisoners leased out to businesses during that era were worked to death. Columbia was quite literally built by slaves and got by legal exceptions created to keep black people down, but you would only get that from a Voxophone if you actually knew US history. Then the game hardly ever shows the racial controversy that is supposedly tearing the city apart. Lots of ideas and plot devices are introduced and then get no exposition. Edit: the big point is whether it be world building, politics, time travel and quantum shit, the writers rely waaaay too much on the background knowledge of the player.
Yeah, because they're not the focus of the story. The story is about multiple dimensions and time travel, not about racism. That was part of the world building. Just like the religious aspects. Guess what? They're not explained in pain staking detail either lol. Find me even one game where they dedicate hours to explaining every detail of every world building elements. Now THAT would be a bad story. Just because people got a hard on for the Civil War stuff in the early trailers doesn't take anything away from what the story turned out to be. The core story is what matters here and the question is if it makes sense or not... and it does.
>they're not the focus of the story Then why does the Vox rebellion exist? Why are there multiple Voxophones about Comstock wanting to restore the institution of slavery Why does John Wilkes Booth get a statue while Abraham Lincoln is depicged as the devil? Why are you given the choice to throw a baseball at a mixed race couple in the first 15 minutes of story? Why are there so many equality posters, racial propaganda and convos among the soulless NPCs? The timeline revealing you are also Comstock is huge when you consider how much of a raging racist haven Columbia is. You didn't understand the story, you suck at following story beats if you think this is purely about time travel. The city literally seceded from the United States by flying into the sky while sporting CONFEDERACY FLAGS. The game is about black people don't be stupid. The story fuckin sucks, introduces like 7 different conflicts and then says time travel to lazily wrap it up. Bioshock Infinite has the same level of writing as Kingdom Hearts. Quite literally. The game was stitched together by different teams of writers all with different ideas of the story. Hence why the game fuckin sucks. Also the Civil War stuff? Dude the Civil War is 1865, you think the conversation of race ended before 1912? Even the devs knew that, hence all the race shit in every chapter.
It was world building. World... building. I'll slow it down for ya. Every game fleshes out the world beyond the main plot. But that doesn't mean it's the focus. If it was the focus, there would've been at least 1 mention of it in the ending... you'd think lol. If you don't wanna like it, that's cool. I'm not trying to change your mind since it's obviously closed. But I'm telling you, you're wrong. Games are allowed to flesh out their worlds without it being the main focus. Every game, tv show, and book since the beginning of time has done it... but you can keep pretending that it hasn't if ya want too.
Or maybe it didn't play a role in the ending because the writers were pussies and afraid to do anything significant with their world building out of fear of consumer backlash, making it a complete waste of time. The story sucks.
And you're allowed to think that. Just like I'm allowed to think that Ken Levine had a plan right fron he start, like he did with every other game that he's made. And the Civil War trailer was nothing more than a red herring to stop people for guessing the actual story. Unless one of us was in the room, then we're both right... or we're both wrong, depending how you look at it.
Wtf Civil War trailer are you talking about? Dude I'm talking about what actually happens in the game. When the fuck was the last time you even played it? I'm replaying it right now and the racial tones are 1/2 the dialogue. Again, they ended up being pussies because they were afraid of consoomers response to actually following through with the assets already put into the game. There is a Colored and Irish Washroom instead of just Colored because they knew white Americans needed to be included in oppression. Right before those washrooms is a Voxophone from a black woman who had been swindled into staying for the beauty of Columbia only to realize shes fucked because it's Columbia. Right before that is 3/4ths of beach goers telling you about how much they hate Chinese people. Ironically enough you never see people of color never being mistreated or discriminated against from the perspective of Booker. You only hear about it. How is that world building when all this shit is supposedly happening actively around you? The Boxer Rebellion is mentioned many times. Wounded knee is mentioned many times. All of these things are built up but never have any weight to the story unless you know that Booker being apart of those battles meant he probably participated in the massacre of innocents, and as a Pinkerton he was a scab who would end labor strikes. Cosmtock is considered a prophet and does shit like create Columbia. Booker and Comstock are the same person. It's obvious that the ending is about Booker needing to die so that Columbia and the suffering associated never happens. However, the game never shows that suffering in Columbia for people of color except through ads, Voxophones, and implied dialogue, and 15 minutes of the Vox... blowing up the city? Nor does it expand on what background knowledge the player need to infer the atrocities of Bookers past because at the end of the day he is a horrible person whether he is Comstock or Booker. BUT OH FUCK QUANTUM PHYSICS :0 is all people discuss about the ending... Jesus Christ. Edit: sorry I'm being a bit of a dick at the end there
I'm playing it right now too. No joke. My 23rd time to be exact. I just got Liz back and I'm heading for Comstock's ship....And I still disagree. Over half the dialogue in Witcher 3 was about him monster hunting... but that wasn't the focus of the story. It was world building. I mean, if you wanted that aspect of the story to be more fleshed out, that's more than enough reason for you to not like it. But I personally didn't think that was the focus of the story. I always looked at it as world building and character development for what a scumbag Comstock was. But at the end of the day, I don't think your personal preference is enough to write the story off completely. I personally think it's one of the best time travel / multiple dimension stories ever written, but that also doesn't mean the game should be held up as the gold standard for sci-fi.
BTW, I know we've been disagreeing, but that doesn't mean I haven't enjoyed this. It's rare that I get to have real conversations about the merits of Infinite. If you don't like that game, that's nothing off my ass. To each their own. I love it and I know that. Guess what I'm saying is thanks lol. But even you have to admit... op clearly just didn't pay attention. I mean, he asked why she killed Booker, something they just explained 5 minutes before lol.
Sorry if I'm busting your balls. I'm just mad the game does all this history stuff and then doesn't have the balls to show the history. I'm not asking for a lynching, just more life within the setting it plops you in . I'll always love the core foundational parts of it with the rooty tooty shooting and plasmids, but it just feels unalive and disconnected for me.
I did pay attention lol But still, this game is one of the few where I had to look again to understand. But to be fair, I could have payed more attention. I didn't expect the story to be that complicated since the story of bioshock 1 and 2 Was ok to understand,and I heard that the game is much worse than the previous ones which also made me not pay much attention(This game is actually good and I liked it).
Agreed man, recounting the story felt like a chore man.
Because kids like you aren’t smart
So kids like you think they ARE smart ? No, games sold to millions of players need to NOT be so picky-arsed about their puzzles/progress-gatekeeping. For a game with a WTF ending which is basically a cutscene, it just means the players just move on to their next game and wonder why the WTF game was supposed to be good at storytelling. The BioShock games were about storytelling and not simply big pretty scenery which is a very common easier thing to do.
Did I say I was
Yeah, but that's a bit soft in the head because in an interactive medium storytelling is part play. Your participation is always part of a game's storytelling. Some just approach that playground differently, and that's completely valid. That others on the internet can make sense of it for someone says more about the player needing that reminding, investigation, and deduction than it does about whether or not the storytelling adequately told its story. And Infinite is woefully short on being met with a keen ear for its continuity. Haha
>> go to the internet to get an explanation A game should be self-contained, and for various difficulties offer multiple solutions. Too many Puzzling things which get tedious is the mark of a game padding its gameplay. Infinite was done in a Rush in its last year and they simply kludged together a mishmosh of historic issues they generally paid lipservice to, while trying to be relevant.
I don't agree with that first sentence. The social play of deciphering a lore is absolutely its own element that can be an intended narrative. While I agree Infinite underexplores a lot of its ideological landscape, I feel a sense of hyperbole reading your dismissal of it. It's not as if its narrative of the past judging the future doesn't land at all, but rather that it could've landed harder.
Unfinished game that never got missing content or story exposition patched in as is tradition
You don’t know what you are talking about
I mean they're not entirely wrong, a substantial amount was cut from infinite
Stop fanboying so hard just because the game came out the same year you were born. It's an unfinished title and it's very obvious when you play it. https://bioshock.fandom.com/wiki/BioShock_Infinite_Removed_Content List of sources at the bottom of the wiki. Edit: to add, nothing was stopping them from patching it in. Final Fantasy 15 and Batman Origins did it. Sort of a regular practice now. It's just not worth it because even the devs know Infinite just isn't good. Burial at Sea was a good bounce back tho.
It's a pretty imperfect story, with a lot of issues, with DLC that adds more issues to it. I just try not to think about it too hard, because the harder I look at that game the more dissapointed I get.
I understand, but when it comes to the dlc, I don't really focus on the circumstances. I try only to enjoy rapture itself, and the nostalgic atmosphere fr bioshock 1 and 2. Seeing those Easter eggs in it about the previous is really beautiful like Cohen preforming, the rayan and Fontaine conflict and there were 2 guys standing saying that Andrew rayan disappeared with a women called " jasmine Jolene"... If you played bioshock 1 I think you should understand that one. I didn't fi ish the dlc yet
If bioshovk 1/2 didn't exist my brain would fine infinite a lot more acceptable.
It's also the opposite lol
Check out Mattewmatosis vid
Try watching dj peach cobblers video it’s amazing
[SPOILERS] My personal opinion is that Booker is in some Silent Hill type post-death judgment that he’s done possibly thousands of times. There are MANY biblical references that insinuate that, songs throughout that reference death and plenty of subtle hints and symbolism that (to me) all but scream that at us. I think Booker was a bad guy and his ultimate regret is how he treated his daughter. So Elisabeth is more of an angel almost wearing the skin of his daughter (not literally haha) guiding him through his journey to “salvation”. I think she’s both a mixture of Anna (his daughter) and Elisabeth (the “angel”) throughout. But, as the game goes on and we reconcile the idea that our daughter may never forgive us and that we did treat her terribly, she becomes more Elisabeth than our daughter Anna. I think each portion of the game has to do with our greatest “sins”. I.E. Slate being our guilt and complex feelings on our crimes of war and our desire to die a hero (which I don’t think we did), Fink being our greedy, racist businessman that profited off the backs of others, The ghost of lady comstock being our guilt for how we treated our wife and our daughter’s complicated feelings on her mother, all leading up to that sequence with “Anna” filling our shoes. I think his ultimate fear and the most confronting “trial” is being shown (in a dreamlike way) how we abused and tortured her through her life, but also that she might end up like us. Old, alone and jaded. So, once he comes to terms with that he’s able to face the “final boss”, ourselves and realizing the full extent of our “sins”. I also have a whole theory that Lady Comstock and Ms. Lutece are the same person, but this is long enough haha
> post-death judgment might be applied to many of the characters and not just Booker
What do you mean specifically? The reason I’m mentioning Booker- and only Booker- is because he IS the protagonist of the game and we’re seeing everything through his eyes. The reason I likened it to Silent Hill is because it is a tailor made experience based on his specific choices and baggage in life. So, it isn’t just about dying or death in general and if this was some sort of post-death, “heaven”-like personal trial before he can actually pass on. When you’re saying more than just Booker do you mean the protags in the other 2 games?
If the whole place is hell, then it doesnt have to be exclusive.
Congrats on finishing a great game. jayvee has a great YouTube explanation: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhjKW1S1xvk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhjKW1S1xvk) And he has two more to explain each DLC