SPOILING the Ending - BioShock Infinite

if it was true that changing something in one reality would not effect any of the other possibilities than killing dewitt at the baptism would only remove one comstock, one elizibeth, and one dewitt from existence while the rest of them would continue to exist in their own dimensions. the same way saving the younger elizibeth had no effect on the older elizibeth that gave you the note. killing that one dewitt wouldnt effect every comstock and elizibeth

All that is great. But this game has the same problem the original Bioshock had, and its even more severe now knowing they had more resources and a better techonlogy at hand this time around:

It's no other than the gameplay itself, which is pretty mediocre. I agree that the story invites to replay the game to see all those tiny details from a different angle, but the gameplay makes the process tedious (hell... i even had to lower the difficulty to skip the combat parts in Infinite because i was getting bored of it -of the combat- in the very first playthrough... after a few minutes i jsut stopped caring about the game and just wanted to see the story...)

I even liked Bioshock 1's weapons and plasmids better (although the gameplay is obviously more advanced -more fluid- in Infinite since it is six years newer). Btw is it just me (maybe i missed something in the translation) or the plasmids (vigors) are completelly unjustified this time around? They were a -rather strong- part of the story in Bioshock 1, but here the link seems pretty weak and even cheap in my opinion.

Really, if they don't create a compelling to play game they just have a movie with a lot of added problems that movies don't have (aged/potentially aging graphics, boring gameplay bits in between the story which can destroy the mood and rythim, mediocre "acting" and "feeling transmission" through expressions because of the limitations of animations... i spent one of the most dramatic parts of the game laughing my ass off because Elizabeth was picking a lock sobbing about something and in that very instant she suddenly became completelly happy again and tossed a coin to me...). If it wasn't because exploring Rapture in first person (and also, but to a lesser degree in my opinion, Columbia) was a pleasure, you could even say that Bioshock would have been a better movie than it is a game... (and i undesrtand why critics "inflate", as it were, the scores to try and drive the future of gaming away from mindless military shooters and teen-oriented absurd and weak stories to more complex and mature settings, with actual writting on them). But still, it is a shame because it could have been a masterpiece and it is not.

Btw, about the story itself, I'll have to play it again because I'm not a native English speaker and i have probably missed some details, but i got the impression that, while the ending is compelling and very dramatic, the earlier development of some parts of the story seem to be weaker to me (like the whole Vox Populi double morals thing and the uprising). Also, the political/ethical debate is always welcome since it's a extremelly rare thing to see in a game. It is a great way to challenge and interest the player, who would otherwise be headshooting mindlessly (and it was almost a requirement for this sequel after the high standard set by Bioshock with the debate about the ethic of racial/artistic perfectionism, etc.), but in Infinite some of them feel a bit forced and lackluster, specially the racism part, which seems pretty underdeveloped and not really linked or contributing to the main story, which was already deep enough without it (maybe the religious part is more related, althought not as much as a ethical protest/debate but because of the major role that the "baptism" of DeWitt plays in the ending).

This is only my personal opinion and again I recognise that i might have missed a few details (some because i got lost in translation, some because of a few poorly placed "journals", which end up getting smothered in gunfights), but there i leave it.

Anyone else think that Elizabeth being called "The Lamb" and Eleanor Lamb from Bioshock 2 was a deliberate allusion? Also did anyone look at Comstock's hand after you kill him to see if he had the same Brand as uh... himself? Might answer some questions.

About the scene after credits. Make look like everything was Booker's dream because if you look at the big picture it has all his fears and insecurities mixed with a lot of ideias that are not compatible with each other like quantum physics and back to the future time travel. Everything was his subconscious telling him to get his shit together and take care of Anna.

My 2 cents: a man cannot be washed of his sins. They are always there. It's far better to be haunted by your mistakes than to pretend you never made them, as Comstock did.

thank your for taking the time to go over the ending, i have been thinking about this since finishing the game sunday. I played all the bioshocks all had good endings this one was the best in that it makes one think and put together the puzzle and that very last portion at the end of the credits I did see by accident just while sitting and thinking about the ending to the game. I was thinking that very last scene was Booker with a memory of his daughter but does not find his daughter in the crib or a alternate universe that there was no debt to be paid and he was just checking on his daughter.....its a mind bender for sure.....

honestly i played bioshock 2 and it was amazing .... this one infinite not the same level as the previous one ... however, the story of this one was perfect in every meaning .... if u combine the story of this and the options in game play in previous bioshock everyone will get a master piece .... this game for me the game of the year ....

When Booker first arrives to Columbia the priest baptizes him and you ask yourself at the end, why didn't he turn evil and reborn into Comstock? Well he says it right after he wakes up, booker says "that priest needs to know the difference between baptizing and drowning". So he wasn't baptized. At the end when Elizabeth(really the Priest at the beginning) drowns him they don't baptize him but drown him and he wakes up to be with Anna. Imagine that originally when the priest baptized Booker he did it properly and brought him back up and he was reborn into Comstock. Elizabeth(really Priest) drowns booker dewitt and he eventually Booker Dewitt wakes up, gets married, losses his wife, and anna is born. The Booker we know doesn't go through these events again so at the end of the credits he goes back to the point where he was going to give away anna, but since Comstock, Columbia, and Lutece Twins don't exist in any universe him and Anna/Elizabeth are safe to live their lives.

I think I figured this out just from the last clip...he killed his child then killed himself in multiple realities.

Am I right?

I am on the sidelines trying to figure what to play while waiting for my 3rd person game The Last of US , and I watch this and I have not a clue what's going on with this game ? what kind of game is this ?

Hi everyone,

I gotta say, I suspect that the coin toss scene at the fair entrance part of the game carries great weight. I have literally counted the front and back of the board which the male Lutece carries and realized that there is a total of 123 coin tosses, which are all resulted in heads. To end up with such situation has almost the probability of 1 over 1e37 (2 to the power 123).

This clearly implies an almost infinite fine tuning, which is probably caused by the possibility that among all those infinite Dewitt's in all those the infinite universes, the Dewitt who will become Comstock and our protagonist who will sell his daughter for his debts after the baptism choice/shatter point are "almost the very same" man.

Let me clarify : In all those infinite universes there are many Booker Dewitt's and some of those Dewitt's are similar to each other and some of those are probably very different than each other. This level of difference is clearly varying between infinite and zero. Unfortunately, in Bioshock Infinite, there are two -or perhaps one ? :)- particular alternate Booker Dewitt(s) out there, where the difference between the "constants and variables" of their universes is so small that it is proper to consider that they are actually living in the "very same universe". Created as a thought experiment or maybe as a redemption act -"our hair shirt"- or maybe as both, in the forcibly created universe by Luteces where those two meet, even after 123 coin tosses the results was not still deviating -yet :)-.

I think I can conclude that there are a few such implications in the script :

1) Falling enough to sell your daughter for your debts and becoming a merciless zealot twisted by power can be almost equally corrupt.

2) Two critical but opposite conscious choices (choosing to be baptised or not) can be almost caused by the very same facet of a person's character.

3) Infinite plus one is still infinite and -hopefully- Elizabeth finds or creates the universe in which Dewitt finally tosses a tail.

Just saw the ending myself earlier today. When it was over and the credits started to roll, I just sat there in silence for the whole credits and just let it all wash over me. The game's IGN review said there was a big twist like the 'Would You Kindly' reveal from the original Bioshock- but this ending had so damn many of them all at once. o_O

First off, going back to Rapture was such a shock- I initially thought it was Irrational just doing some massive fan service, but I gave me an idea about where the vigors came from- the vigors are essentially Infinite's version of the plasmids, so perhaps Fink peeked through a tear into Rapture in the future and got the idea to make the vigors from the plasmids he saw there? Just a thought.

One thing that confuses me a little though was when Booker's drowning Comstock on the airship near the end, he's yelling 'You cut off her finger and put it on me!' When I first heard that I assumed it meant that Booker was a creation of the siphon machine as well using Elizabeth's finger (much like how Eve was created from Adam's rib) that the Lutece's created to take down Comstock, but Irrational got me on that too. Not sure if that line's meant to be important or not in the grand scheme of things.

Theoretical physics allows three models for the possibility of multiverse: The black hole theory, string theory and quantum theory. Of course these are just theories and not proven. Watch this video for a short explanation of these theories.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywn2Lz5zmYg&list=PLED25F943F8D6081C&index=1

Irrational has used the Quantum theory as its basis for the game. It states that for every choice of events that there has ever been , a separate universe is created. So it supports concept of infinite parallel universes. However Irrational introduced a very clever concept of tear. A tear allowed not only to travel within this multiverse but also travel through TIME.

So when Booker travels back in time in a separate universe and dies before baptising, he disallows the possibility of Comstock and all parallel universes that contained Comstock and adult Elizabeth would cease to exist. There would be still infinite universes but none would contain Comstock or Elizabeth. There may exist universes where: Booker does not exist , Exists but with no children, Exists but with a son or a daughter etc. etc. All of this is pretty straightforward and that's what happens in the game.

BUT the makers made a mistake in the lighthouse scene. That scene depicted multiple Booker and Elizabeth. That means OUR Booker was not the first to escape Columbia with Elizabeth. So some other Booker might have drowned before us. meaning while our Booker was still roaming the streets of Columbia, suddenly the world should have collapsed and we should be back to the scene after the credits.

What do you think ? They screwed up that scene right? There was no need to show multiple Bookers at the lighthouse. The whole thing was possible if we were the first to successfully rescue Elizabeth from columbia.

Hair. So. FABULOUS !!!

Hey guys, thanks for the great explanation it really cleared some things up. I just want to add something that , although it may be obvious for some, i guess thats the point of this video to share ideas. Maybe the markings at Booker's hand are not just the acronyms for his daughter. Maybe A.D. is a way to show just how much the world have ( and will ) changed with Anna/ Elizabeth, just like it did when Christ was born. I don't but it seems like an aweful coinsidence .Anyway great game and great video.

Great analysis, but I think you got something fundamentally wrong.

Anna would not have been born before Booker is baptized. Why do you think Comstock wants her in the first place? He most likely has no children. And as we learn in the game Comestock did not only get cancer from using Luteces' contraption, he also got sterile. To continue his legacy and plans for the future he had to get a child, and what better way to do this than to use Luteces' contraption to look into alternate universes, where he got a child, essentially adopting his own flesh and blood? That is, we have two outcomes that drives the story. One where Booker gets baptized and renames himself Comstock, and one where he does not get baptized and gets a child, with the ladder being the protagonist, that we are playing.

So yes, if Elisabeth kills Booker before the baptism she will in fact cease to exist, and that is what you are seeing in the very last seconds before the credits.

Or!... what if she only drowned the Bookers that where to accept the baptism? Elisabeth would still cease to exist, but the “original” version of her, Anna DeWitt, will not. She will be right back in her fathers cradle, since there never was no Comestock to take her away in the first place. Maybe that's what the post credits sequence is suggesting – an ending with Booker and Anna Dewitt together – a happy ending :)

I think after that whole discussion, including all comments below, I think the only thing still un-answered is the identity of the Archangel, who she/he is ? and how/why he/she approached Booker Comstock.

There is this short essay written by argentinean author Jorge Luis Borges where he tells that mankind storytelling has always been the same four stories retold in a inifinite number of ways but are the same four in essence. And we are doomed to keep retelling them. I think that's kind of what Levine&staff did with bioshock. Bioshock Infinite is both a retelling of the original story and a justification of why it has to be so . It's like they are trying to say "Look there is this story,about a man that built a tower to achieve his dream,his sins stained the foundations tough, and it falls on his sucessor to both finish it and cleanse him.And that's how it always is."
PS:Sorry for any grammar mistake,english is not my native language.

The one thing I wanted to do most in Rapture was walk around during it's golden age before everyone went crazy & the place went to hell.

So for me the most memorable moments in columbia where the simple joys of walking around talking with the local snobby citizens. It immersed me in the game world.

Unfortunely the quantum physics part of the game I didnt really enjoy. I thought it felt foreign to the bioshock series and reminded me more of that singularity game. (which im still hoping for a sequel)

The 1 ending also seemed disappointing since you had minor choices in the game. Maybe that was the whole point, that your choices didnt matter. But it just would have made a second replay more enjoyable. Just my opinions.

when i saw rapture, it brought tears to my eyes, it still do. i didn't expect that.

I can't agree with the idea that cutting off Anna's pinky finger gives her time travel power, because every human is losing and gaining cells all the time. When Robert Lutace, Comstock and Booker walk through the time door, they must leave something from their body, so they should have the ability too.

Why not the Luteces just kill Booker DeWitt themselves when he was being taken baptism as their ultimate goal is to kill all the Comstock.