Let's Discuss BioShock Infinite (HUGE SPOILERS)

It's implied that dimensions only diverge at key junction points, meaning that the number of realities with Comstock and Columbia may be large, but no infinite. We see throughout the game how actions in one dimension can impact denizens of other dimensions with the soldiers that remember dying because you killed them before travelling through the rift. It is therefore conceivable that by killing Booker at that crucial junction point in one dimension, the same effect echoed out to the other dimensions preventing any Booker from ever going through with the baptism and being reborn as Comstock.

@starvinggamer: Thanks for the insightful commentary! You explained a lot of convoluted material in a very easy to understand manner. I think I'm ready now for a second playthrough!

Dude! Me too! What a weird game to think of, right? Reminded me more of Singularity than Bioshock, sometimes.

Remember what the male Lutece said about "fixing" their world? How would they even know how far back they needed to go cause a lasting change. Booker assumed that stopping the "birth" was enough. The ending at the end of the credits suggest it did not stop it because he still exists.

The ending sequence showed the player the infinite possibilities through the lighthouses and the LIMIT to Elizabeth's power when she tries to open that specific door and fails. They did not succeed. They don't have control over the multiverse. They were looking for a multiverse where they win and they found one. They are mistaken about the ultimate effect this has on reality.

here is my understanding

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=835BtHm-HMk

(lol - 1st post like many! Thx Google!)

My understanding was that there are basically three trans-dimensional 'god' beings in the game: 1 - The 'Infinite' Lutece twins (which is basically the same person) 2 - 'Infinite' Elizabeth after the Siphon is destroyed and for a few minutes 3 - Infinite Booker at the end.

These beings have all knowledge of all timelines (Elizabeth: "I can see all the doors...") so therefore they can see behind every door and every constant and variable. While Elizabeth realizes it when she conjures up the key at the first lighthouse ("I have always known"), Booker doesn't unlock this realization until a few seconds before he drowns himself. Luteces probably unlocks this due to their murder in a different reality.

In this game's multi-verse theory the constant in these universes is that:

1) Comstock always picks the baptism and becomes a charismatic religious leader

2) He always meets Lutece which starts the chain of events.

I don't think Robert Luteces was trying to fix EVERY iteration of this universe, just the ones that result in Elizabeth-centric NY razing universes. They couldn't do it on their own however, they failed 121 different times before the game's Booker finally broke through thanks to a variation of Old Elizabeth that finally broke through her conditioning and realized she needed to change things.

That action allowed the chain of events that resulted in the baptism suicide and the 'fixing' of the timeline. It also ended Infinite Elizabeth as well as Infinite Luteces as we know them because without Comstock, they would not have the funds to create Tear tech. This did not however, ended every iteration of Booker.

An infinite number of Bookers still exists that *never* went to the baptism. One of which, is what we saw post credits. While I'm sure there are an inifinite number of Bookers and Elizabeths who are happy together, Levine chose the Booker that we would most recognize in the context of the game: One that still went through Wounded Knee, the flawed Pinkerton single father of one who never got an opportunity to trade his daughter to a transdimensional Lutece.

Came here to say something similar, although I don't believe the dimensions in Infinite are truly "infinite" or that Booker ever completely became a quantum being.

EDIT: The finite number of dimensions is according to a few things that happen in the game. Booker always gets off the boat. The coin is always heads. Booker always fails to find a way past the Songbird. Booker always ends up giving Anna to Lutece. In dimensions where these things are possible, they always happen, meaning that while the number of dimensions is beyond comprehension, it is not truly infinite.

Not exactly..... All the coin flipping meant is that initial variation was minimal, when you pick the broach each twin thought one or the other, this is where branching of bookers begins, the futher down the path they go, the more drastic things start changing, the reason why Booker always gives up anna(which isn't correct statement) is because that is the beginning of the chain that leads to the Comstock/Booker split loop.

I think the choices (coin flip, broach choice, whether to kill/spare Slate, etc.) are there to kind of 'mark' our individual journey through the game.

In the room where you rescue Elizabeth after being tortured, there are tables with pictures/etc. of scenes from the game that were opposite from mine (saved Slate which dies in prison, but the pic shows Slate being killed dying at Hall of Heroes, etc.). Old Liz probably had the 'other' broach under her jacket as well if we were able to see it.

My assumption is that the 'other' choices you make end up being the 'wrong' ones that result in Elizabeth never getting saved.

This timeline (+6 months from when Liz got taken by SB), Booker dies and Liz goes crazy from years of torture and hopelessness. Before that chain of event happens however, Old Liz drops you in after the 'other' Booker failed for a do-over. Except this time, with the secret to controlling Song Bird, which is key to fixing both loops (Old Liz: "My first chance for salvation, is also my last" - paraphrased)

Anyone know the significance of the number 122 by the way?

It's the number of heads that comes up at the coin flip, it's also the code to the gate at the lighthouse 1-2-2. It's also Booker's birthday on the loading screen (1/22/18something).

While I doubt it's anything lore related, I kinda wish I knew what it was in reference to. Like the door code in previous looking glass/irrational games (451) as an ode to Farenheit 451

This forum thread has been very helpful to help make sense of the ending. When the ending revealed that the original Bioshock was just a variation of the timelines it blew my mind. I was in awe when I showed up back in rapture after the airship battle. I unfortunately had a few things spoiled for me before I played the game. I new Elizabeth was Booker's daughter and that she killed him in the end. I also new that booker was Komstock. I give credit to the game and it's writers for still keeping me guessing, on how it would all fit together, until the end.

On a separate note, I really wonder what kind of DLC they could put out for this game. It couldn't be something gameplay related like a new gun or vigor. I really don't know what kind story based content for it either. If it is story based, then maybe it will tell some of the story from another characters perspective. Maybe Daisy Fitsroy leading her rebellion with an alternate timeline freedom fighter Booker. I'm really just throwing stuff out there. By the end of the game, they've really broken down that story and it's universe to the point where it would very confusing adding any other complicated story beats. I'm pretty interested to see what they put out for a 20 dollar season pass.

Cool thread. My interpretation of the post-credit stinger was that Elizabeths drowning BookStock ceased the "a lighthouse, a city, a man" infinity loop and Booker now gets to lead a normal life.

You know what's sad? I went to pull that level, though to myself "that dude is going to be right behind me" than realized they hadn't done that obvious jump scare with all the viewmasters and than shat myself when the dude actually was behind me.

This game makes the original bioshock look like child's play. The only other game (of AAA stuff, there's a lot of great smaller XBLA and mobile stuff) that I can think of that game me great of experience from start to finish is Portal 2.

I can buy that Booker, Elizabeth, and the Twins became trans-dimensional beings (Elizabeth and the Twins are for sure), but I wont buy the denial of a multiverse with infinite possibilities and that certain events are set in stone. Nothing is set in stone in a multiverse. The very nature of a multiverse is that every possible outcome for every possible scenario (including something as mundane as turning your head a specific direction when crossing the street) exists and continues to exist despite one outcome occurring.

However, I see a solution. You can have a pocket multiverse that does not follow the traditional idea of a multiverse. There is nothing that forces any particular universe from following the laws of physics found in another. The Twins figured out the rules for the particular multiverse they inhabit. It is possible that in this multiverse the idea of a city, a man, and lighthouse is a constant and that other constants are present within it. It can also be finite per its own rule set.

RDR had an equally amazing ending (maybe better, only game that has ever made me cry) but in terms of overall story it doesn't hold up ofc.

They could do something with the post credits. Maybe Booker is sent through another tear with all the knowledge of what has happened. Not sure what the gameplay would be, but it would be interesting.

However, how I took the post credit ending is that the whole situation was changed for all the Bookers who went through the baptism and that now the cycle is truly over. Now Booker can now live happily with Anna.

Here's a picture of me after I finished the game:

I'm assuming that the Industrial Revolution DLC bonus thing is canon so you can go off the information given there. Some of the vigors were introduced there as being used for practical reasons and later adopted by the police and Vox as their situation intensified. It all happened several years before the events of the game. They also talk about the development of some of the weapons.

I got the impression that they were getting ready to mass market the vigors the day of the fair.

@golguin: That hinges on the assumption that the Bioshock multiverse is a true infinite multiverse as we understand it.

EDIT: Which we cannot know based on the context of the game alone. Maybe Ken Levine will be more forthcoming at some point.

@golguin: That's what I assumed as well, the whole presentation had a modern day iPod reveal to it in a sense.

Also, that awful pre-order game had story in it? I stopped paying attention after five puzzles and just looked up guides for the rest of it, it seemed like the choices were just there to slightly break up the endless tedium.

I like this explanation of the post-credits most - though, I would add that there seems to be an element of memory collapse upon the final Booker we experience (as he seems to be surprised to hear Anna in the room).

So it is both as you say - a Booker who is living as a single father - and the Booker we got to play throughout the game (along the many other Bookers who collapsed into that one).

Apologies if this has been covered:

Could it be possible that the Big Daddy tech from the original Bioshock could have come from the found corpse of the Songbird? The scene in Rapture with Booker and Elizabeth is before the first game because the environment is not damaged or destroyed at all - it actually looks like the area where you get your first plasmid and fall off the balcony.

Thoughts?

Haha - or perhaps it was a Rapture which never deteriorated!?

That entire part threw me for a loop, especially as I never played the original. It would be interesting if what you postulate was the case, though.

I'm just going to say that I love how the game vindicates BioShock 2, since the game's plot is much more parallel to the sequel's story - a father goes into a special city to save a god-child from her crazed parent who has aims to viciously use her to shape the world into their own radical philosophy. I don't know if somebody mentioned it, but I just saw that chart on the first page where people go with the BioShock 1 comparison and I just had to point it out, possibly again.

In fact, if they ever want to make a parallel version of the first game, make Elizabeth the protagonist and have her unknowingly kill Comstock. That would be quite brilliant.

God Damm this games ending, First ending in which my mind is literally blown. never saw that twist coming.

easily one of the best games this gen easily just cause of that wrap up, goddamm.

thanks for making this thread, it helped me make sense of the ending.

Hey, guys, the Elizabeth who drowns you at the end of the game is not "your" Elizabeth, right? Booker literally says so ("Wait, you're not... who are you?"), and she isn't wearing the choker pendant that you chose. She's surrounded by Elizabeths from other worlds and they all disappear after you die. Elizabeth's dialog specifically states that this scene is not the same place as Booker's previous re-living of the baptism.

If you follow the logic of the Lutece's audiologs and dialog, it seems unlikely that Booker is a specific being belonging to a specific dimension at the end of the game. There are multiple allusions and specific statements which suggest that the more you pass between dimensions the less specificity there is to your identity, that you begin to lose definition. If you add that information to the in-game representation of the effect of travelling between dimensions on those around you, where persons dead in one dimension and alive in another deteriorate into an in-between state, there is a strong suggestion that simply travelling between states or bringing knowledge of one into another causes some form of convergence of the two - this is also supported by the experiences of both Booker and the male Lutece who were both incapacitated by their first trip outside of their own dimension and who both constructed artificial memories to reconcile their two realities.

So, combining all of that nonsense with the stone-cold fact that when you pass through the door after Elizabeth finds the key in her hand all of the doors to all of the dimensions are open which is explicitly stated in the dialog (convergence!) I think it adds up to a reasonable case for the final scene being a sort-of-symbolic-sort-of-literal representation of the elimination of the Comstock tangent from the universe through our Meta-Booker's sacrifice and conceptual death at the hands of the universal victim of the scenario in the multiple Elizabeths. They're killing the idea of Comstock at the moment of its conception, "smothering him in the crib" as the game puts it...

...which is a bit of a messy resolution when you consider Elizabeth-Prime's absence from the proceedings, the fact that most of the horrible things which happen in the Comstock dimensions are the direct result of Lutece providing the technology and being complicit in the events (I get that those characters are like greek/roman gods flitting through the story and doing as they please regardless of the consequences but their contribution to the ending is a bit too slight and weightless for my liking when compared to the vast influence they have on the plot) and that the other "constant," the city, isn't addressed at all and could/should still occur given that it was built on Lutece's tech and built by the US Govt. not Comstock himself. Granted, these are mostly just logical inconsistencies and minor annoyances which can be hand-waved by saying that they aren't important to Elizabeth's story - except for the major frigging oversight that your actual Elizabeth is missing from the final scene, that's just crazy.

I do think that Infinite is probably the best-told story in a videogame that I've experienced and likely the best story in a game without qualification. Still, you can kind of see the seams where the refined aspects meet the base elements of what was perhaps a more Columbia/Comstock-centric story originally. I kind of hope that Irrational have got the *Shock formula out of their system at this point because I'd love to see what they could do when beginning with a simpler premise and without the need to incorporate the gameplay elements inherent to that franchise at this point.

Oh, that's a lot of rambling. My original point was, hey, why isn't your Elizabeth in the final scene?

No, there's a Big Daddy and a Little Sister in the tunnel in the background of the scene where Songbird dies. Also, Songbird tech is based on Big Daddy tech to begin with, that would be really super-circular weirdness.

You could see a Big Daddy and Little Sister if you look carefully out into the ocean. They're in one of those clear glass pipe walkway things.

As for the tech I believe it's implied that they saw Rapture and got the idea for the Songbird from them. It's also implied that Booker is actually the Songbird (an alternate dimension version of him).

Where was that implied? I totally missed it but kind of suspected it might go that way.

One of the tape recordings talks about the tech that could be used to create a protector/warden for Elizabeth. It's implied the tech is the Big Daddy technique used in Rapture seen through the tears. They needed someone to become the Songbird. It couldn't have been random dude B given how protective Songbird is of Elizabeth and the strange sense she gets from it. It's the same sense she got from Booker. She could feel he was her father.

There isn't really anything in that audiolog which suggests that it's Booker though. I can see it playing out that way if they decided to flesh it out for some reason but I don't think there's any good evidence for that conclusion in the game yet.

Years of analyzing stories has paid off, and I totally figured out the final plot reveal from fairly early on in the game.

And I can insert a relevant image from the Infinity series as a additional perk!

Although the part where you visit Rapture blew my socks off, given how everyone has denied flat-out any ties to Bioshock. Yeah, it's too brief to really count, but it was still amazing.

Bioshock has become my Half-Life in a universe where Half-Life no longer a thing.

The audiolog proves there is someone inside the Songbird. Elizabeth mentions that the Songbird either feels familiar or she feels a strange attachment to it (I don't remember) aside from the fact that it was her only friend. Comstock tells Elizabeth that there is a reason why she feels drawn to Booker. The feeling with Booker was the Parent-Child thing. You would assume it's the same feeling with Songbird.

Again, I like the idea but don't feel that there's sufficient evidence in the game to make a strong argument either way. It makes sense that Songbird and Elizabeth could have formed a bond during her childhood, given that there is a human element to Songbird and that to a naive and lonely child it would probably be pretty great to have a giant monster hanging around who is also your care-giver, your pet and your protector. It also makes sense that Elizabeth's perception of their relationship would have changed when she was more capable of recognizing how abnormal and isolated her life was compared to the lives she could view through rifts, with Songbird's nature as her jailor being clearer. Eventually Songbird becomes a bit irrelevant to proceedings as Elizabeth is leashed by the syphon, at which point it's difficult to imagine that he does much more than ferry her from her cell to the labs and back, if that.

I think that it's more interesting that they have Songbird behave so affectionately towards Elizabeth after she has control of him. The way that they interact at that point is not really by necessity, there's no requirement for Elizabeth to plead with and cajole him and there's no reason for Songbird to nuzzle against her, that seems like voluntary behavior on both sides. It does make me wonder if Songbird had a more important role to play at some point in development.

However, it's worth noting that every dimension seems to have a Songbird ("I can see them through the doors. You, me, Columbia, Songbird..." ) which kind of hurts the idea of it being Booker given that there have been a finite number of times that the Luteces have sent Booker on this mission.

I always liked to look at it more thematically than literally.

Just as the Songbird/Elizabeth relationship is comparable to the Big Daddy/Little Sister relationship, it's also not set in stone. The damsel role is played by a collection of Little Sisters in the first game the same way Booker/Songbird plays the protector roles in BInfinite.

I also like the idea that Songbird may have been a corrupted version of Booker. It explains the connection they have and further reflects how evil Comstock really is. Not only did he take another Booker's child in a different dimension, he also took ANOTHER Booker, exploited his connection with his daughter and corrupted him to serve as the final gatekeeper to Elizabeth! Truly evil stuff.

My only wish was that Comstock could have been handled better. With the racism, religious exploitation, kidnapping - he has a lot of traits that could have made him one of the most hated villains in video game history (Kefka from FF6 comes to mind). I feel like we never really get as intimate with the character as we do with Ryan from the 1st game. We never feel Comstock's direct 'hand' influencing the tragedies in BInfinite. A few more scenes here and there maybe and a more dramatic final scene with him probably could have put him in that "OMG I HATE HIM SO MUCH" level but we never get to that point with him.

Something I don't get/rubs me the wrong way:

Comstock had to die at his birth to prevent everything from happening. Why then, is the Booker who did not accept the baptism (the one you're playing as) killed? All the Elizabeth's disappeared, again indicating that the "good" Booker was killed because the "bad" one who created Columbia is sterile.

It's just kind of fucked up that the Booker who is a father dies, and the evil dictator lives (but doesn't get a heir to the throne, presumably). I hope I'm wrong.

It's like the Schrodinger's cat thing.

Just like the proverbial cat is in the box being both dead or alive, once Booker goes to the baptism, he is both Booker the child-selling father and Comstock the religious nut. Only by drowning himself does it result in neither possibility. It would be like the cat committing suicide before it goes in the box - in that instance, there would be no alive/dead cat in the box - you only have a dead cat.

There is an infinite number of Bookers who never go to Wounding Knee, never becomes a Pinkerton, never loses his wife during birth, etc.

I think that's what they are showing post credits - a Booker who was the most like OUR Booker (PI, Pinkerton, etc), but one without a Comstock to take his baby Liz.

Granted, there is a lot here, so maybe I missed someone talking about this, but why doesn't Slate recognize Booker and Comstock are the same person? He's the only character in the game I can think of that had direct interaction with both, including from before Booker became Comstock. Does he just miss the resemblance? Is there no nervous twitch, no odd mannerism that Zachary Comstock still holds from his days as Booker Dewitt?

Why did Comstock even want Anna/Elizabeth? He's sterile, and needs an heir to Columbia, but why not just steal any random baby from the streets? Did he or the Luteces know that she would gain this dimension altering ability?

Why do all the Dewitt's converge at the baptism? If we have multiple dimensions, with different constants and variables, then there's a Dewitt that doesn't get born, a Dewitt that doesn't join the army, a Dewitt that is in the army but not at Wounded Knee, a Dewitt that is in the army but not at the Boxer Rebellion, etc.

The story is fine; it's certainly a mind fuck, and I kept screaming "WHAT!?" at my TV when they warped to Rapture, but it seems a mind fuck for mind fuck's sake. Every plot hole or loose end can be swatted away with "Oh, multiple dimensions." Like Bioshock, the star of Bioshock: Infinite is Columbia. It's a breathtaking tapestry of technology, religion, racism, and the oppression and subsequent violence caused by their compression into a single, floating city, cut off from the rest of the world.

Can someone shed light on who this is:

I loved to Bioshock Infiniti. It was a great game. The ending made sense to me but was bittersweet. I'm partial to happy endings in my games <glares at Casey Hudson>, however unrealistic they might sometimes be.

What's ironic for me personally was how unvested I was in Columbia vs. Rapture. Playing Bioshock, I was very interested in what happened in Rapture and the stories of Ryan vs. Atlas / Fontaine. In Columbia, I thought things started to seem superficial and I really only cared about Booker and Elizabeth.

I think part of that is intentional. Bioshock Infiniti has more emphasis on the Infiniti than the Bioshock. It isn't yet another story of hubris, city-building, and social revolt surrounded my questions of choice and agency. It's primarily a story, a deeply metaphysical story, only of choice and agency surrounded by the superficial trappings of Columbia's fall. At first I started to care about the outcome of the Vox uprising but the problem was I wasn't playing through one Vox uprising but several uprisings as Elizabeth took me from one universe to another and from one point of time in one universe to a later point of time in another. All that shifting started to detach me from what was going on with the politics of Columbia. Columbia's fall really stopped mattering for me.

I think part of it is a little confusing and might have been unintentional ramifications of developer choice.

• I personally feel that there weren't enough audio diaries in Bioshock Infiniti. I know I didn't find some of them and maybe some eagle-eyed player can point to an achievement that shows that were as many available to be found in Infiniti as there were in the original Bioshock. I felt I heard a lot more from Ryan, Tenebaum, Fontaine, etc. during the original Bioshock than I heard from any character in Bioshock Infiniti (excluding Elizabeth)
• I was also surprised that some NPC's with memorable character design (The Songbird, The Handyman, the Boys of Silence) didn't get much direct attention to their backstory in the game. I really expected their to be a level where I explore a Handyman factory and I see that Comstock was using Fink to transform outsiders in Columbia (Irish, Italian, etc.) into monstrosities forced to keep the city functioning. or level where I entered Songbird's lair. Maybe Irrational Games was playing with expectations and knew players would expect game design like that based on the original Bioshock.

As someone who loves Bioshock games, I now wonder "Where does Irrational Games and Ken Levine go from here?". After you've made a critically and commercially successful sequel that basically explores any permutation of the themes from your original critically and commercially successful game, does the franchise have anywhere else to go?

P.S. To those in the thread that have communicated an appreciation for Bioshock 2, I'm definitely in your camp. I actually thought Bioshock 2 was a good game, not as good as the original Bioshock, but not some glaring attempt to wring money out of a successful franchise. 2K did a nice job telling a heartfelt story of one special Big Daddy and a Little Sister amidst the chaos of Rapture. I don't know if that format could work for an Infiniti spin-off as there really isn't a canonical Columbia. Of course, someone at 2K could be pitching such a game right now "You know guys, we need a game where you are just a lost Handyman trying to reunite with your original family"

@beachthunder said:

Can someone shed light on who this is:

for real. I assume the note on the map was for him, but who killed him? Lutece? If so why all the torture stuff?

Can anyone wax poetically on the significance of the nose bleeds? I understand that it signifies the memory of ones death in another dimension - so, from that, once Booker starts to get nosebleeds, was that just foreshadowing his death at the end?

Not going to go too deep here, but I know in the one timeline where he leads the Vox he died as well. I think he has multiple deaths throughout the game, just in different realities.

This was my feeling on the ending, too. I enjoyed how they showed the ending with Rapture and then seeing the infinite lighthouses but once you introduce a multiverse then your story becomes a bit silly.

What I enjoyed most was how they subverted the damsel in distress thing because I'd argue that it's Elizabeth who ultimately saves Booker from himself. By eliminating all the worlds where Booker either becomes Comstock or gives up Anna, Elizabeth stops him from becoming a crazy evil 'prophet' or making a decision he regrets so badly that he has to scar himself. The post-credits sequence shows Booker with baby Anna, showing that there is a world where the two are together. Obviously, by introducing a multi-verse, there's a possibility of there being infinite world where Booker still gives up his child to someone else or doesn't have a child at all, but its best not to think about those.

It's not necessarily to do with death (as Lutices said, everyone is already dead at some point in time); it's more of just a physical representation paradoxes - like when Booker looks at Comstock, he's looking at another version of himself. Basically, bloodnoses are when people end up in a conflicting situation (consider deja vu in real life).

When Booker gets the first bloodnose, it foreshadows that he is Comstock, because he is coming face-to-face was a conflicting version of himself.

@khazidhea: When you get to the baptism at the end, Booker says that is was right after Wounded Knee. If they follow actual history, the Wounded Knee massacre happens in 1890, 22 years before the fall of Columbia. And Anna/Elizabeth is supposed to be 19 in 1912. So she was probably born later.

What happens when you get baptised when you first enter Columbia? Did he drown? Did he 'become' yet another new person?

See I've been wondering that and also why the baptist says something like "this one's not clean yet" did he get a nose bleed while he was underwater? Or is that part of the ceremony, I don't know I'm not religious lol.

Isn't it related to Booker's suppressed memories? Or witheld knowledge? Oh god, I've already forgotten.

Wait, okay, there's the whole bit with the gunsmith and the dead cops in Finkton, they get all fucked up because they "remember" being dead in another dimension. Booker gets nosebleeds when he learns of his own death in the Vox rebellion, when he kills Comstack, when he realizes that he has to die in the baptism scene, and a couple of other times that I can't remember the specifics of. Booker is incapacitated when first removed from his home dimension, male Lutece also went through that trauma. I'm pretty sure that both Lutece and Elizabeth give explanations for this which I can't recall but I think it's a cognitive dissonance thing, the mind struggles to reconcile the multiple realities and crafts false memories to make sense of the data. Why does that affect the gunsmith and the cops too though, why do they remember being dead? Hmm.

He got wet.