OK. i just beat the game and i have no fucking clue what just happened... maybe im simple minded or it could be due to the fact that i had to balance work/girl friend with playing the final hours of this game and had to break it up piece meal that i missed something somewhere. the parts im missing here is why was Elizabeth so important? why could she control the tears? why did comstock need her so much? it had to be more then just she came from another time line and he needed an heir. i kind of get that in one world booker renounced his sins and became comstock in another he didn't and stayed booker had a kid and so forth. maybe thats not important to the grand scheme of things but i feel like im missing the bow that ties this whole plot line together and i have nothing but a bunch of information out of context here.

also what was with picking the bird or the cage?

I think you've mostly got it. She's Booker's/Comstock's daughter; Booker wants her back because he wants his daughter back, he realised he made a big mistake; he went through a dimensional portal, so he doesn't remember that she's his daughter. She can control tears because she is in two dimensions simultaneously (her finger in one dimension, the rest of her body in another dimension). Comstock wanted an heir, but he became sterile in the dimension he was in, so he purchased his own child from the other dimension (the dimension Booker comes from). I believe picking the bird or cage is just the twins testing the variables/constants of the current dimension, much like the heads and tails (it has no real effect on the story/ ending/etc...)

i think i just need to play it again.

You could read through the various mega threads about the ending and the nature of the game's multiverse and Elizabeth's powers.

@golguin: yeah i have been sifting through them, but i have yet to find the answers i seek.

Just keep reading because they are there.

It's basically what @beachthunder: said but I'll reiterate it to see if it comes through for you.

Comstock wants an heir to carry on his religious vision, but is sterile because of his experiments with tears. Therefore, the only way to have a child of his "own" is to acquire one from an alternate version of himself that went down a different path and had a child. He finds Booker with the help of the Luteces and purchases Anna, but because of Booker having second thoughts, Anna ends up losing part of her pinkie finger.

At this point part of Anna/Elizabeth is in Comstock's dimension and part of her is in Booker's dimension. Elizabeth's ability to control tears is a direct result of the multiverse trying to reconcile the fact that she simultaneously exists in two dimensions. Elizabeth wasn't important per se, but in the end it had to be her because she was his "daughter".

Picking the bird or cage is the Luteces testing the current iteration of their experiment. This is the 122nd time they have tried to alter the course of events and free Elizabeth from her torturous fate. Flipping the coin is a constant, as all 122 times it has come up heads. The choice with the choker, however, is a variable that the Luteces are under the impression is a constant. If you pick the cage, their belief remains unchanged. However, if you pick the bird, Rosalind expresses surprise as what they once assumed was a dimensional constant is, in fact, a variable. This decision has no impact on the overall story.

the parts i'm missing here is why was Elizabeth so important?

As a small hint: Since the setting in the game features (at least) two parallel worlds, who is the only one with out a alternate version? When you have that answer work backwards (and forwards) from there.

yeah ok its all coming clearer now. i take away from this. being an adult sucks! i should have never started and stopped the game so many times during the week because so much of the underline story got lost. il gladly keep my girlfriend however this job thing is for the birds... Thanks everyone im still going to play it again, just maybe when i have a few days off and get through it in a reasonable time

@jackel2072: I think it's worth a second playthrough anyways, just so you can 6th Sense it and look for all the clues that you couldn't possibly have known were clues the first time through.

Just keep it all in perspective. Although video games are fun and Bioshock Infinite is a very good game I'm not sure it actually is more important than real world stuff. Personally I waited till Friday and Saturday to focus and concentrate on the game instead of trying to play it a little bit throughout the week.

The interesting thing in the game is that there are about two audio logs from Letuce that is integral to understanding hte story and I'm not sure they are easy to come by. I found them, but I think a lot of people missed them. (one of them I only found because I was lost...)

In the logs, Letuce states that she figured out a way to suspend an atom in the air. From that molecule she worked with an apple and from those results she figured out how to float columbia. From that work, she started figuring out quantum entanglement. The atoms she was working with, she found, existed in her dimension as well as in another dimension. By morse code, she began talking with someone manipulating the same atoms in another dimension. That person turned out to be a male version of herself. She became interested/obsessed with opening a hole so that she could bring her "brother" into her reality with her. Meanwhile, Comstock saw this as an opportunity to steal a baby from another dimensional version of himself. So male letuce contacted booker with the proposition of bringing him the girl and erasing his debt. Booker accepted and then immediately regretted it. He tried to get her back, but when he crashed the site where the transaction was taking place, comstock took the girl before he could grab her completely. As a result, elizabeth lost her finger. Because she was split between dimensions, she has the ability to open tears at will.

When Comstock produced a daughter, Lady Comstock resented the girl. Comstock, who never really thought it was his fault to begin with, faught constantly with his wife until one day he murdered her. He blamed the murder on Daisy Fitzroy, who just happened to be there, as an alibi. Soon he also had the Letuces murdered to cover up his growing list of crimes. Because the Letuces had existed between dimensions, though, an aspect of themselves remains between dimensions in a sort of limbo. It is from this limbo that they crash around on multiple dimensions and try to find a booker who is capable of overthrowing comstock. They seem to constantly be poking at reality to see what they can influence and what they can't. Their existence is somewhat like the film groundhog day. Some things they cannot change like the coin always landing up heads, but other things they can influence like giving booker the recharging shield.

Comstock needed Elizabeth because his ultimate ambition was always to destroy, somehow, the surface world and use Columbia as a new version of Noah's Ark. He saw Elizabeth destrying New York City, and his own death at the hands of Booker. That was sufficient for him, and that was the ending he was attempting to guide the world to throughout the entire game.

It's at this point that I lose the plot. Comstock's plan works and Booker is too late to save elizabeth. She's old and the damage is done. But she sends booker back in time with a note for young elizabeth. Booker goes back in time to save her and manages to do it. It's at this point that Elizabeth somehow, I have no idea how, gains some sort of cosmic awareness. SHe says she can see all the realities, but she also seems to be all knowing. She takes booker, not to another reality, but to a non-reality that is the nexus for all realities. In this non-reality Booker sees other Elizabeth's doing the same spirit guide routine for other Bookers. Ultimately, and I feel like this is where the plot falls apart, she takes him to the spot where he was baptised and became Comstock, but NOT the same place. (there was a crown when Booker was baptized. Now there is nobody. Even teh preacher suddenly dissapears and leaves the other elizabeth's to drown booker.)

Personally, I wonder if the ending is supposed to branch into a spirit realm to make a point that there is some religion in the world of bioshock. It's not all strictly guided by science.

A depressing thought came to me regarding the ending.

It seems to me that even after Elizabeth drowned Booker, that just creates a separate universe in which Booker is drowned and Comstock never exists. But the universe where Comstock rises up out of the water from a baptised Booker still exists somewhere.

So ultimately, these human beings are driven by their desires, wishes, and what they feel to be the right decisions. But in the face of mind bending metaphysical science, every attempt to make meaningful change is just impotent screaming into a void.

Comstock had great plans for Columbia, plans for it to "rain fire on the mountains of man", but because of his proximity to Rosalind Lutece's universe-skipping technology, (the technology he used to see the "future" and cement his standing in the peoples' eyes as a prophet) Comstock aged rapidly and found himself in need of an heir to carry on his plans. Unfortunately, Lutece's technology had also left Comstock sterile and unable to father an heir, so it was decided to get the next best thing, the child he fathers in another universe.

Picking the bird or the cage was simply another experiment of the Luteces' to demonstrate constants and variables across universes. Which broach gets chosen is variable. Flipping the coin was another of these experiments - the coin coming up heads being a universal constant. Another universal constant is that Booker DOESN'T row.

Yeah, that's my take on it. Such is trying to contemplate the nature of infinity.

The post credits scene of the game seems to suggest a reality where none of it ever happened and Booker and Anna stayed together just fine.

I think the end is Elizabeth putting Booker back together by making him confront his past then using her powers to bring Booker back to the "birth" of Comstock. Since Comstock's birth is prevented then that timeline no longer exists. No offer is ever made to buy Anna so Booker seemingly gets his daughter back.

You know, i actually didn't connect the fact that her "brother" was an alternate version of herself, that completely eluded me even though i found both of the audiographs lol. Another one you need is the one where she talks about how "comstock" ages in one reality but not the others (this actually almost ruined the plot for me as I figured booker was probably Comstock at that point, but i also thought he may have been the songbird so i was still open to other possibilities). But i wasn't really surprised he was comstock after that.

I believe the game ends on a paradox, since if booker dies then so does Elizabeth, and if she dies who can drown booker? All but one of her selves disappears at the end, so my guess is that only one reality created out of those probabilities remained, and that's the one she was born in. And since she was raised in an alternate reality maybe that's why she gained the powers she did and why she seemed to keep the same outfit and probably the same memories after she killed her father.

One thing i found odd was the audio's you find of comstock talking about how they didn't accept him in the army etc, and his whole fantasy world of being in wounded knee etc. But if he really was Booker, then he really was at wounded knee and considered a "hero" (the baptism was afterward right?) since that is where the realities split? I dunno lol

I didn't find that log about comstock aging in one reality but not the other. Thanks for mentioning that.

My understanding of how she got more powerful is that it was because the songbird destroyed the siphon in that tower after the Vox stop attacking Comstock's airship.

@baconbutty said:

From what I understand, Elizabeth isn't creating a new branch, just replacing the "Booker becomes Comstock" one with the reality created by drowning Booker, so the Comstock branch gets cut in its conception and the "Booker rejects baptism" line adjusts itself accordingly; she's modifying that branch so that Booker choosing to get baptized hits a constant: he drowns. This preserves the split, kills the Comstock realities and preserves the Booker one. This is supported by the fact that a) creating another separate reality would be pointless and it's already been done by the Luteces - since Elizabeth is a being outside of time and space after the tower gets the axe, she would be aware of that, b) the place they visit is not the place where the baptism originally happened, which is mentioned by Booker himself, so it means it's an artificial place (which also excludes actual time travel) and c) the Booker from the stinger wakes up in confusion and cries for Anna, not knowing if she's in the crib - this means that this incarnation of Booker got some sort of memory dump from the incarnation we played as; it happens before in the story when you cross over to the reality where Booker became a martyr for the Vox Populi and player!Booker starts recalling events from the life of martyr!Booker.

Exactly. The tower is a power limiter. Elizabeth mentions that she's pretty sure that when she was a kid and the tower wasn't around, she was able to create completely new tears, not just open existing ones. The siphon exists so she won't become inconveniently powerful and so her powers could be slowly dosed back to her.

Are you saying that Elizabeth created Rapture :o

Two things:

- There is no paradox in having Booker and Comstock both exist. There is no paradox eliminating Comstock. The transition from one state to the other doesn't involve any special paradox especially considering the other point.

- Elizabeth is a paradox. It doesn't matter what actions she takes, especially after The Siphon is destroyed, because nothing that happens from that point on can make her more or less paradoxical.

@beachthunder: Um, no. I mean "tear" as in "entry point to another reality", not "new reality". The tears she open during the entire game are tears which already exists, she just spots them and opens them. Her line indicates that she was already powerful as a kid.

Fair enough, I was just thinking that she can create new realities, so maybe she created Rapture herself, just a thought :|

I get that, but she doesn't just become more powerful and able to open new tears, she goes beyond that and is able to perceive all of existence at once. I mean, up until that point, opening a tear simply means making a hole from one reality into another. She can just look through that hole, or she can step through that hole into a new reality. But, once she gains her all-knowing state, she knows exactly who she is, who booker is, who booker COULD BE, and where and when to go to make those changes occur. She is essentially God at that point. She takes Booker not to an actual place, but rather a newly introduced world between worlds. (there is only one lighthouse per dimension, but in the dimension she takes booker to, all lighthouses are visible at once). She then takes booker on a spiritual quest to resolve the inner struggle he's dealt with his entire life. (he is a violent man, a liar, a cheater, a thief, a sadist, and probably worse. Even when he tries to change as Comstock, he cannot. He uses his new religion to do the same things he was always doing but feels justified in his doing it now. ) By using her newly found insight into who Booker is, she convinces him to take the only step he can to eliminate the evil inside him, which is to kill himself.

So I guess to paraphrase my lack of understand of where the plot goes, take, for instance, the scene where she opens up a tear and grabs or tornado. I have no problem with the idea that she opens up a tear to kansas willy nilly, I have a problem understanding how she knew there was a tornado at that exact point going on in order to take.

@jeff: @brad: @ryan: should take a look at this before the spoilercast so the conversation isn't centered around stuff we already figured out.

also this:

Elizabeth mentions that her powers are a form of wish fulfillment. That is why she is able to bring up cover, health, ledges, etc. when Booker needs them. We don't know how long Booker and Elizabeth were apart when he finally finds her in that testing chamber (Elizabeth said something like "long enough"), but she evidently got better at using her powers and wanted a Tornado. There was a limiter in that room and she erupted when Booker switched them off.