@khazidhea: No, Elizabeth wasn't born until after Booker walks away from the baptism. That's why all the Elizabeths disappear at the end because they were never born.
In one timeline Booker walks away from the baptism, meets Anna's mother who dies in childbirth, he then gives away Anna to himself from an alternate timeline to settle gambling debts. It's not really clear if he knew who he was giving her away to but he sure as hell figured out part of it when he saw them disappear in to the dimensional tear.
In another timeline Booker is baptised and is reborn as Zachary Comstock and builds Columbia with Lutece for the 1893 world's fair (in reality the city that was built for the 1893 world's fair was the "White City" in Chicago which is the topic of the novel "Devil in the White City" which Ken Levine said inspired the game). Comstock then secedes from the US after the Boxer Rebellion and he wants to bring destruction to the world below which he sees as sinful. Comstock sees using technology that Lutece had created that he would die before he started his war against the ground but his child would complete it. But he is sterile from his proximity to the dimensional travel/viewing technology so he buys Anna from his alternate self that walked away from the baptism, renames her Elizabeth and locks her up in the tower with the siphon to take away some of her power and has songbird as her protector/jailer.
The presence of that dimensional technology along with maybe the presence of Elizabeth causes all these tears to happen in Columbia which explain all the anachronistic music and scifi technology. Fink has an audio log where he says he got the ideas for the robotics, cyborgs, and vigors by looking through these tears.
The Luteces, realizing their mistake then pull Booker into Comstock's timeline and send him on a path to rescue Elizabeth. But he fails to rescue her and she eventually becomes like Comstock through years of brainwashing. Then after she has started to attack New York in 1984 she brings Booker to her and tells him how to control the songbird. She then sends him back to sometime after the songbird recaptures her but before she is brainwashed and he resuces her and tells her how to control the songbird. She then has the songbird destroy the siphon so her power is fully restored and she realizes what she needs to do to kill all Comstocks in all timelines where he exists, to stop Columbia from being built in all timelines where it exists, and ultimate how to stop herself from destroying the world in all timelines where she is brainwashed.
She takes Booker back to the moment where all those timelines originated, the baptism, and drowns Booker before he either goes through with baptism or can walk away from it. This stops Comstock from existing but it also stops herself from existing. This is the only way to stop the destruction of Comstock and to save herself the torture of being locked away and brainwashed.
In the post credits scene it appears that some version of her, like the Lutece, is "lost between possibilities" and still exists in some form.
Log in to comment