@secondpersonshooter said:
The real question no one seems to address is why does killing the booker who had already been through colombia reset the timelines? They should have actually traveled back in time and drowned the Booker who had yet to experience any of these events, but for some reason it works. I'm willing to not look too deep into it for the purposes of narrative, but it still doesn't make sense.
No. Going back in time would sever both branches and create a stable time loop - and one that would not escape the grandfather paradox, to boot.
There are two theories: she's either turning Booker rejecting the baptism into a constant or creating an artificial reality where a Booker accepting the baptism always drowns and putting it in place of the Comstock-is-born branch. Either way, they are changing reality so the Comstock branch gets cut. This is supported by the baptism site you see during the ending not being the real baptism site from Booker's life and the fact that the post-credits Booker gets a memory dump from the one you play throughout the story.
@demonsoul said:
-That is not the same thing. They don't look the same. One Lutece is male and the other is female. Booker looks young and Comstock looks old. For example 2 old looking Comstocks can not exist in the same universe just like 2 female Luteces (that both look exactly the same) can not exist in the same universe. The difference here is that all of the Elizabeths look identical and are in the exact same place at the exact same time. Time paradox.
-I think you misread what I typed (or it might be my fault and I didn't explain is clearly enough-sorry). The problem is that all of these Elizabeths DO have a necklace on. They are all missing the medal (either cage or bird) that attaches to the necklace.
1. Elizabeth transcends time and space at this point - she is essentially a physical god and a rule-breaker in herself. Not to mention that there can't be a time paradox simply because they aren't using time travel. There are no loops. They are jumping realities in the multiverse. Time travel plays a limited role in the story earlier on with Old Elizabeth, but it's not used to change reality. This is almost spelled out during the ending when Booker remarks that the baptism site is not the actual one.
Also, technically, they can. player!Booker manages to exist in martyr!Booker's reality, even though the latter is dead - if the realities determined each other and had rules concerning two copies of himself at the same time, he would immediately die the moment he crossed over. But he doesn't, the multiverse just tries to merge them by dropping on him the memories of his martyred incarnation - which, by the way, starts to happen whenever Comstock talks to Booker. Elizabeth gets a pass because she already exists in two universes at the same time by virtue of having a finger still stuck in Booker's reality.
Not to mention that Robert and Rosalind are almost the exact fucking thing - they are separated by a single chromosome. Even Comstock and Booker are less interconnected, despite being the same person.
2. They are missing it because the medal is just an insignificant variable. It's a droplet in the sea of possibilities which is the multiverse - it's just a reality check created by the Luteces, its only purpose is to see what's a variable and what's a constant. All the Elizabeths you see are just a manifestation of said possibilities and infinity - they're all different to highlight that. A different way would be to make her go Agent Smith on your ass, but that would probably be too unsubtle and would make you not pay attention to the unused Elizabeth design (as part of the game's metacommentary). You also don't see "your" Elizabeth presumably because she's no longer just "a single" Elizabeth. She now transcends time and space, as I said - she's what the Luteces are, only ten times more powerful.
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