SPOILER ALERT! YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!

Elizabeth then leads Booker through another door, which turns out to be a tear from Wounded Knee to Booker's office. You've been in and out of this room each time you respawn.

Now Robert Lutece is standing at the doorway, as you've seen him before in post-death hallucinations, only now Booker recognizes him as the mysterious client he's been working for. Now there's a sinister revelation that would make anyone but Frank Fontaine wince. Lutece is making Booker the same offer Fontaine made Jasmine Jolene: he wants to buy his child. A few hours before this point, I'd begun to suspect that Elizabeth was Booker's daughter. When I'd seen promos with Ken Levine describing how he wanted the player to develop a relationship with Elizabeth, I expected it to be romantic. But when I began playing, I felt more of a paternal instinct develop towards Elizabeth, similar to the one I'd felt towards the Little Sisters when controlling a Big Daddy in BS2. The more I thought about the conversations Booker had with Elizabeth when walking along Columbia's boardwalk, the more I thought I had a good idea where the ending was going. In fact, I thought Elizabeth might have been plucked from a universe where the love of Booker's life hadn't miscarried. It turns out Booker's wife died during childbirth, but Liz wasn't a stillbirth, and Booker did begin raising her as a single father. Only to sell her for money. As desperate as Booker was to get out of his gambling debts, you'd have to imagine accepting an offer to buy your child would make you vulnerable to an investigation on human trafficking. Also, why is Robert male in this universe and Rosalind female in Comstock's? They don't seem any younger than Booker. If the point where the two universes diverge is Booker's baptism, as later revealed, what caused the difference in genders? Did the same butterfly effect that made Robert into Rosalind determine Booker's acceptance of the baptism and rebirth as Comstock? Have the Luteces already been dimension-jumping and Robert just happens to be doing business in Booker's universe at this point in time? It's open to interpretation, but I sense a plot tear.

Anyway, you get a look at Booker's baby, and you have to imagine, at that tender age where no one other than immediate family recognizes the child's gender, Booker must have spent a lot of time accepting compliments about his son and explaining that she's his daughter. As much as Booker sees now how ridiculous the situation is, he once again is trapped in his alternate body and Elizabeth assures him he must press "X" -- I mean give up the baby -- to continue. So is Robert there to deliver Anna/Elizabeth to Comstock in his own dimension? Actually, Comstock's waiting for Robert to deliver the child in a dark alley. This raises questions like 1)Why does Comstock act through a mediary rather than just show up to pay for the child himself? If he's capable but wants to avoid getting his hands dirty, why enter Booker's universe at all? 2)Why doesn't Comstock simply take control of Booker's body? It hasn't been hard to accept Booker and Comstock being in the same place at the same time when we didn't realize they were the same person. Experiencing the ending the second time, it doesn't make sense that Booker would enter his own body at these moments in his history but not enter Comstock's in Columbia. If all of this was presented as an out-of-body experience or a vision through a tear, I'd accept it. But it seems they adamantly needed an excuse to have the player hit that "X" button to avoid presenting this as a cut scene.

We do get some honest answers to some burning questions. Booker's office is desolate and boarded up. The black-and-white noir office has been a figment of Booker's imagination. A quick cutscene explains Robert's reverse-heel-turn, offering to bring Booker to Columbia to retrieve his daughter, then Booker passing in and out of consciousness as Robert explains the game's opening quote about creating new memories. It's also revealed that the AD brand on Booker's hand stands for Anna DeWitt, but that should seriously come as a surprise to no one. Booker insists all harm is undone now that Comstock is dead, but Elizabeth isn't satisfied, insisting he's still alive in a million other universes. Prior to this, Booker and Elizabeth have been happy with hopping from one reality that doesn't suit their purpose to one that does. Now, suddenly, every possible universe in which Comstock continues to commit genocide is their responsibility. Booker offers to take care of this by going back and smothering him in the crib. As hardened as Booker is, I think I would have had to turn off the console if it came down to pressing "X" to put a pillow over an infant's face.

Elizabeth leads Booker back to the baptism at Wounded Knee. The final twist is that this is the moment where Booker DeWitt was transformed into Comstock.

Unlike Elizabeth's parentage, this took me completely by surprise. The second playthrough, I did recognize several innuendoes and hints at this, but the first time it just didn't seem like there was enough set-up. Playing through or watching again to make sure the twist makes sense is a sign of a good twist, yes, but a good twist should also feel immediately like it's the only thing that could possibly make sense. The first time I encountered this, I was scratching my head, failing to come up with one thing that stuck in my mind that would lead to this conclusion. Also, Comstock's voice is completely different than Booker's. Necessary to hide the twist, but if Troy Baker didn't have to fake another voice, why couldn't Courtnee Draper, who does an absolutely stunning job of voicing the young Elizabeth, have the same luxury? Her old lady voice in the Boys of Silence universe was laughable and took me out of the game for a moment.

At first, part of me was also offended by this twist. If accepting baptism made Booker into Comstock, is the moral of the story that baptism makes you a d-bag? This is one part of the ending that did improve on reflection, though. The BioShock games have always been about how being human flaws the best ideologies. I did find value to take away from this in that Booker chose to live with his sins, making him bitter but also wiser, while Booker/Comstock thought baptism was a way to relieve the guilt, taking it as liberty to embrace the flaws that made him a genocidal maniac. But that's something for another time . . .

Sure, baptism could conceivable radically alter his whole world view, but how does it make him ambitious enough and give him enough resources to make his own fantastic city? Andrew Ryan was a billionaire with powerful connections. Booker DeWitt as we know him is a loner. How, in this alternate universe, does he encounter Rosalind Lutece, not hold the fact that she's totally British against her despite his hatred for anyone who isn't American, and team up with her to make his own society in the clouds? There's just too little in common between the Booker we play and the Comstock we lock horns with. Just a few similarities between the two here and there might have been enough to make the final twist feel more natural without giving it away.

Part of the backhanded slap in religion's face does still sting. Sure, I can see baptism possibly leading to Booker becoming a horrible mass-murderer. But in a game that is emphasizing how infinite choices can result in infinite universes, does this really merit destroying every universe in which Booker accepts the baptism? Surely there's a world or two out there where Comstock goes on to build a small church in the slums of New York and ladle soup to the homeless or becomes a missionary to Africa. Also, where did the people who were witnessing Booker's baptism go? Why is it just the preacher now? Why does he still not notice Elizabeth or the conversation she's having with Booker? Where did all the other Elizabeth's come from, and why aren't they all occupying the same body? Does the preacher see Booker being drowned? Does one of the Elizabeth's have to drown the preacher as well so he keeps his mouth shut about it?

Finally, after the credits (which I stayed glued to if only to hear the fantastic 1900's style cover songs again) there's one more scene, playable by the loosest definition. Booker must press "X" one more time to enter Anna's room. Is she in the crib? We don't even get to see that, in an attempt to leave some ambiguity for people to discuss. The game goes into a loading screen one more time, and one more time I hoped I would be launched back into the action, maybe placed into one more large room of Vox Populi thugs to take out. Instead, I'm back at the main menu, ready to start 1999 Mode.

Ken Levine is a genius. Let me throw that out there.

The twists can be broken down as follows: 1. Elizabeth is Booker's daughter. 2. Booker sold Elizabeth to pay his gambling debts. 3. The Luteces brought Booker into the alternate dimension Elizabeth now occupies to offer themselves, Elizabeth, and Booker some redemption. Columbia exists in this dimension, not the one Booker is from. 4. Zachary Hale Comstock and Booker DeWitt are two different versions of the same person.

These are some good ideas. It's really the presentation I take issue with. Plot holes could be easily fixed by another form of exposition other than fifteen minutes of wiggling the D-stick and pressing "X" to make the ending "playable." My biggest issues are twofold: 1) the presentation of the ending doesn't mesh with the internal logic of the rest of the game and 2)like ME3's much maligned ending, choice is merely an illusion. Levine has said that it was never his intention to have two alternate endings to the original BioShock. He wanted decisions to have more immediate consequences. Infinite offers a few interesting decisions early on. Choosing the bird or the cage determines what jewelry Elizabeth wears for the rest of the game. Choosing to trust the shady man selling tickets results in Booker's gun hand being bandaged for the rest of the game. Other decisions matter even less in the scheme of things. Whether you were cold enough to agree to throw a baseball at an interracial couple or not, that ball will never leave your hand, as satisfying as it would be to throw it at the bigoted announcer and watch him fall.

The system of using either trigger to make your choice would have been welcomed in previous BioShock games, where I once harvested a Little Sister just because I accidentally tapped the wrong button. The original BioShock had two possible endings. BioShock 2 had several more iterations. BioShock Infinite has but one. For a series that has always explored the existence of free will while still emphasizing player choice, it's still disappointing the choices made didn't play a bigger role throughout the narrative. The original BioShock's ending is hard to match. One of the most satisfying endings I've seen in a video game is the "good ending", watching Jack go from a reluctant trigger man to a loving adoptive father. One of the best twists I've experienced in any medium is the realization I'd been doing the bad guy's bidding just because he used a particularly polite expression.

When a different team took over for BioShock 2, they wisely chose not to try and top it. While the DLC expansion Minerva's Den had a major twist, BioShock 2's main story just allowed the player to watch the consequences of his choices play out, and the ending was potentially a very touching one. Perhaps it would have been best if BioShock Infinite followed suit. During that long, expository ending sequence, Booker asks Elizabeth to just open a tear to Paris. Later, when Booker's determined to smother Comstock, Elizabeth asks him if he's sure he wants to go through with it. But there's no prompt to choose the L or R trigger. Just to press "X". The player has no choice in the matter. I think I would have preferred to see Booker and Elizabeth visiting Paris. A touching reunion between father and daughter.