When you are baptised on first arrival in Columbia, the priest sees you for who you are and drowns you. Another iteration of Booker avoids that, and we pick up where we left off. When you are escaping from Songbird for the first time and fall into the bay, you die.
Again, a new iteration of Booker takes up the story. When we push Comstock's head into the font on his ship, dead.
Somewhere, another Comstock doesn't get drowned there - we never see that story, but I wouldn't fall asleep in the bath if I were that guy. What she can do is reflexively move to the nearest, living Booker to continue her at this point unconscious mission. In the final scenes, where the Annas come together to drown the successful DeWitt, I see two possible resolutions. Either this represents a group of deities trying to explain to a monotemporal being what they are doing - all the DeWitts who enter the waters will die; or that is where all the successful DeWitts go when their mission is complete.
Comstock must be eliminated, and any DeWitt who has crossed path with Comstock must sadly perish; this would indicate that there are considerably fewer Comstock actors than DeWitt actors - considering the vast amount of effort, chance and energy required to engineer the Comstock future this seems likely. The DeWitt we see at the end is the DeWitt the Annas have been working towards - in his life, he did not get baptised.
None of the Comstock universes ever invaded his to steal his Anna remember, considerably fewer Comstock universes and he was not required to complete the Comstock elimination event chain. No Rapture, no Columbia. They happened. Killing the Booker who lives in an alternate universe 20 years after the baptism won't do a thing to the Comstock would-be at the baptism. But since all almost all?
Some effect did take place. This idea also gives reason to Booker waking up at the end of credit. Another question that bugged me was: "What happened when Booker crossed the tear for the first time when the Luteces came to pick him up in their raincoats? Back to topic, when Booker first crossed a tear for the "first time", he fainted and fell down on the floor I personally cannot determine whether he did cross the tear.
But that is again off-topic. To make some sense of this we have to answer one more question. He opens the door and back into the game he goes. Similar mechanism with more emotional contents was displayed a few times in the game as plot, like at beginning of the game when Booker was "drowned" by the preacher before he enters Columbia.
I came up with one idea to help myself understand this:. Every time Booker crosses to a different universe, his consciousness enters the body of the Booker in that world. If there is a conflict, he creates a new body. The real physical body of his is back in his PI office because it was not able to cross the tear Robert Letece's body was ok with the crossing, apparently. If the Booker in another universe is killed, his consciousness slips back to his original body, ready to cross again.
Being able to do this is what Booker got for crossing the tear. The same rule can also hold true for Comstock, no contradiction was found so far. In the Chen Lin chapter there is one universe where Booker is a martyr and no living body was in existence thus I added in the creating body idea. Later I realized I also have to reconcile the fact that his consciousness did not enter Comstock's body duh so I used the word "conflict.
Booker does not identify with Comstock in both thought and body. I have not yet determined which is the reason his consciousness did not enter Comstock as it entered the Comstock would-be from 20 years ago. Alright here's the deal. This is quantum mechanics, and it's what makes possible multiple realities simultaneously. Each reality has it's own set of events based on events and decisions made. This part in itself is fine, as events are self-consistent within the chain.
Thus, Booker never solely accepts or rejects the baptism, it's always both. I know of no means by which it is possible to have only one outcome due to quantum entanglement see below , which is why the ending is impossible.
The next issue that arises from this is Quantum Entanglement Einstein called it 'spooky' action at a distance, it is quite spooky.
Entanglement occurs when two objects are non-locally connected and transfer information instantaneously. Thus, if you have a quantum coin that is both heads and tails, connected to a like-wise coin across any given distance. Einstein was right to call it spooky, because it appears to violate relativity if information is traveling at higher than relativistic speeds. However, what is actually happening is that two realities are co-occuring simultaneously, just like Schrodinger's cat being both alive and dead at the same time.
Thus, when the Elizabeths make the choice to drown Booker, they are quantumly entangled with other Elizabeths, and their choice just like the coin , will result in a binary opposite choice, again via quantum entanglement. Thus, by choosing one outcome Booker dies , they are determining simultaneously that an alternate outcome of Booker lives occurs. This makes it impossible for them to ever be rid of Booker, by their own choice no less. It seems paradoxical, but it's actually kind of funny.
What's more complicated, and this I cannot give any answers to, is that the laws of quantum mechanics are held up so long as they're self-consistent within their own reality set of events. However, we see multi-chain events interacting, with the issue of quantum entanglement. This makes it no longer self-consistent, albeit theoretically it can probably be dealt with, but no further at this point. Quantum Entanglement is hard enough in one universe, let alone applying to multiple co-occuring realities.
For anyone concerned with resolving infinite sets of universes, this issue of infinity can be resolved by number, and more specifically set theory in mathematics. I don't expect the Bioshock team to know about things like Quantum Entanglement, set theory, etc.
This is a fictional video game. Further, there is "suspension of disbelief," where you put the real world aside in order to enjoy the fictional one you're presented with. This really only works with a good story, and Bioshock Infinite delivered for me anyway. Quantum entanglement literally makes the ending impossible. Infinite universes can be resolved by using number, and primarily set theory.
The game simplifies the many worlds theories from physics a bit, but it also does this a little inconsistently, some aspects use a simplified model, others don't. As a side note, many worlds theory was popularized by a guy called Bryce DeWitt The game argues that after the baptism, Booker will either remain Booker or become Comstock.
So by ending his life before the choice is made and Elizabeth does say this, it must be done "[ Killing Booker at this time will also remove all non-baptized Bookers from the following timelines meaning Elizabeth will never be born.
The key aspect here is the subsequent timelines are affected. But then what about the final scene? And what about the last Elizabeth that doesn't disappear before fading to black? Well here is where the simplification sort of comes in, there aren't many possibly any constants in the world.
Also, the many worlds theory prevents paradoxes since every event creates a new universe and no universes are destoryed.
If i go back in time and kill my grandfather, that event created a new universe. I'm not killing my grandfather, i'm creating a new universe that would had a duplicate version of me, had i not killed that duplicates grandfather. This is one reason why this theory is useful in quantum mechanics. Infinities are a little funny. You can split an infinity in an infinite number of bits or sets and each set could have any number of elements, including an infinite amount. This also means that in an infinite set of outcomes, even the tiniest possibility will be guaranteed to actually occur, no matter how unlikely it is.
So in the game, some universes had the original baptism and some didn't, but how many exacly? Infact there are a basically infinite number of universes with both alternatives since an infinite set can have an infinite number of subsets, each with infinite elements this means that there would likely be a very large number of omnipotent Elizabeths that would all show up at the final scene.
That would probably overload my gpu though, so there is only a couple :. Now given that there are an infinite number of universes, and that all events, not only the baptism, spawn "new" universes, its entirely plausible that there is one or infact infinite universe s where Booker doesn't gamble, or doesn't make a deal to sell Anna, or by some other means enables the final scene. This is the slightly inconsistent bit.
The game portrays the baptism as a constant, but there really isn't basis for that, there might be any number of universes where Booker never went there or didn't even do the bad things that caused him to consider the baptism in the first place.
The game does establish that Booker can have dreams from "other" universes with the burning New York, so the Booker in the "final scene" universe could have dreamt of the events in the "player" universe. Though both of these would be equally "real". The final non disappearing Elizabeth at least if we argue she doesn't disappear could come from such a universe, she is arguably not the same Elizabeth we've seen all game as she is missing the pendant.
The disapearing Elizabeths are also a little inconsistent with the many worlds theory, since they would not be destroying the future universes as much as they would create new ones where the events of the game never happened. The Elizabeths however would still originate from universes where the events did happen, so they would remain.
That would be a very bleak ending though since they would never be able to prevent the games events no matter what they did. They'd only create new universes without those events.
Is this what Mr Levine had in mind when he wrote this? I dunno, but it is a viable logical solution to what we see at least :. Now, whats really interesting is the last couple of voxophones, such as "the ultimatum" where Rosalind talks about Robert and how he wants to reverse what they have done. Rosalind notes that she result is going to be sad but that she will go along with it. From this it would seem that Robert and Rosalind pull Booker in to the or should I say one of the Comstock realities and actually set the events of the game in motion because Robert feels remorse about the baby buying thing.
But then why didnt they just go back and not buy the baby in the first place instead of going from universe to universe looking for the one where Booker is able to defeat Comstock?
Who knows :. Because of the "constants and variables" idea almost any ending you conceive has happened, is happening, will happen. If you look at it this way, we are all right.
The scene is actually quite easy to explain, although Booker dies at the baptism, this only prevents all versions of Comstock being born, not all versions of Booker, it should be noted though that the Booker that you play as does indeed die, but the alternate versions of Booker are still alive, and since Comstock never existed, Anna is never taken, meaning it's very likely that she is in the crib.
To conclude, in the post credits scene, you play as an alternate universe version of Booker in which Comstock never existed, therefore Anna is not taken, and this Booker and Anna live together, whether or not Booker still gambles among other things is unknown though.
As there can be many incremental differences between universes. A fair number of the arguments presented here have already been mentioned in one form or another. I am however surprised that this has not appeared so far, so this theory is supposed to be a concise unified final solution. The term "infinite alternate realities" is thrown around quite often not just in reference to Bioshock , but it seems to me that the background and true implications of the Many Worlds Interpretation [MWI] generally fail to be acknowledged.
To put matters into perspective, think about the following:. In reality, the 'entire' universe may be much bigger or in fact infinite in size, however our observable universe is very much finite 91 billion light years across.
This is crucial, because everything outside of the cosmological horizon is fundamentally inaccessible to us, i. Naturally, any finite system only has a finite number of non-redundant configurations. Moreover, since the vast majority of the universe is practically irrelevant to events that take place on earth after all, the number of grains of sand on a planet in another galaxy does not affect earth's history in the slightest , we really only need to look at alternate universes in which something on earth is different.
The number of those is actually very easy to calculate. That is a fairly large number, but decidedly finite. Crucially though, this not only includes instances where you are wearing a differently coloured shirt or did have something else for breakfast, but extends to universes in which the events of Bioshock or any other fictional story actually transpired on earth, and even includes absurdities like the earth not being a rocky spheroid but rather an equilateral cube made of pure gold.
Obviously, most of these earths are uninhabited or uninhabitable altogether and even the ones that are vastly different in terms of human civilization and history are generally disregarded when people are referring to alternate realities. Taking into account all the MWI's implications has significant impact on the game's interpretability. For one, it would mean that all the choices Booker and Elizabeth make are basically meaningless since there always is an alternate reality in which their alter egos made the exact opposite choice.
Though Elizabeth in particular would still be in a desperate situation after realizing that she cannot change anything , this would make the characters far less relatable in my opinion, because their problems are more detached from reality, and the game is not about nihilism anyway. For Elizabeth however, who can travel between worlds, the realization that there is absolutely no change she can effect would presumably be devastating. Secondly, the ending would not make sense because preventing the baptism would be ultimately futile, as in reality universes cannot be destroyed since their existence is tautological, and even if we grant that caveat, there would still remain other universes in which Booker does not cease to exist.
In some he would not have become a drunk in the first place, or would not have sold his daughter, or genuinely changed his character irrespective of the baptism. In the real MWI there are no necessary constants across alternate universes; there is no reason to assume that the baptism is a fixed anchor across all realities or that all alternatives branch from such a one.
Therefore, I would suggest that for the sake of the game's coherence and integrity it is a much healthier approach to assume that not all possible alternate realities exist, but only those that are in fact created by Elizabeth or the Luteces, all branching off of the prime one which would have to be one in which Booker becomes Comstock. The first alternate reality is created by Rosalind during her first successful experiment, at most a few years before the baptism. Robert and Rosalind continue to create branch-universes while they are working for Comstock and Elizabeth starts doing the same as soon as she begins to display her ability.
The fact that in this scenario the first parallel universe is created only after the events of Bioshock 1 and 2 transpire in Rapture is not a contradiction.
For one, every universe is of course created with a complete and self-consistent history it's not like its inhabitants don't remember anything before a certain date and in addition, time is not universal across the multiverse but unique to each one. That is to say there is no simultaneity between them. This means there are fairly few universes within the game, possibly as few as During the ending sequence Elizabeth first speaks of thousands and later 'a million millions', but I'd interpret that as her being overwhelmed herself essentially saying 'very many', maybe billions, but definitely not infinitely many.
As a result however, choices become meaningful. When Elizabeth first passes over into a new world during the game after finding the dead Chen Lin, disregarding minor forays before , Booker tells her that she does not create new realities but only opens doors to pre-existing ones. He would be incorrect, but that's all right since he doesn't know better and only tries to comfort her. This approach is backed up by the out-of-phase soldiers in the prison.
The newly created reality differs from the prime universe mainly insofar as certain people are dead in one and alive in the other. Had all possible realities been actualized before, every single human would be phased out since there would always be a world in which they are not alive.
Therefore Elizabeth is implicitly responsible for creating a whole new world in which people suffer, which makes her a beautifully tragic and relatable character. In the end then, after the Siphon is destroyed, she essentially becomes God of the entire Bioshock multiverse. In other words, every time you die in game, that's a universe where Booker failed in his mission. Just to clear things up, the twins infused the power to use tears into elizabeth by a machine they invented, she did not have the power naturally, and elizabeth cannot "change" dimensions, it clearly states that in the game.
She can only enter different ones, and until she finds the infinite doors, she cannot choose what dimension to go into, she just has to use the one thats there. And sadly, I dont believe there is a connection between columbia and rapture, there just happened to be a tear to it. This was probably just a fun reference that Ken Levine put into the game, just like when that random girl thinks elizabeth looks like a girl named Anabell, that also is just random, and has no meaning except to get people's minds wondering.
It's ironic that you use the phrase "it clearly states that in the game" when it clearly states in the game that everything you just said is wrong. Umm not quite, in one of Lucete's tapes she states that she engineered the power of quantum physics into elizabeth, and near the end of the game right after you get out of the comstock house elizabeth says that she realizes that non of it is her fault because she cannot create universes, she can only enter new ones, look it up.
The Annabell thing wasn't random. Right after you start getting attacked, you find a voxophone from that same woman who's looking for Elizabeth. I assume she was just asking every girl she knew until she got a specific name, since she wouldn't be able to immediately confirm it was Elizabeth otherwise, not having seen her before.
Sure, it required some breakdown, but it definitely wasn't a random thing. I see, what i was saying is I assumed that the name Annabell was referring to Booker's Anna, which would be nearly impossible. I definitely understand why she said that now, thanks. I thought it was kind of simple. So in order to stop what was happening he had die at the precise moment he became Comstock, which was during his baptism after Wounded Knee.
It becomes less simple when you think of alternate Bookers, just like there were alternate Elizbaeths at that baptism. Unless ALL of the Bookers drowned, there was no way to gaurantee one of them wouldn't become Comstock. But if they ALL drowned then the post-credits scene with Booker and Anna doesn't make sense because he could never exist at that point.
The issue was none of the alternate Bookers realized that to kill Comstock was to kill himself. And like links in a tangled chain, the baptism link was the one that unraveled them all. Or so I picked up from the story anyway. From there you would become Comstock one way or another. So all "Bookers" in that Universe were merged into one single dimension, so drowning them all would erase any possible future of COmstock existing, but NOT erase the Booker who didn't go through with it.
Problems solved. Even though I shouldn't be, as I haven't played the game, yet.. I still don't understand anything that anyone is really talking about, lol.
Oh well, soon enough I will. What happened was people jumped on the bandwagon of repeating inaccurate information and outright BS. The ending of ME3 was completely consistent with the game up to that point, even the so called "star child. They have tried I happen to disagree with that, but it's not something I can prove wrong.
So I won't claim the ME3 ending was good And my guess is the author of this article is one of those first group of morons looking for a repeat performance. Choosing to ignore evidence or arguments isn't the same as there not being any.
Mass Effect ending is far from being fine. I should have been more clear.. I didn't have a problem with ME3 ending. Sure, it could have been a whole lot better, but it didn't piss me off. I was just asking from the articles point of view, that it doesn't work.
So many people, like you said, said ME3 ending was terrible and such. So, just from that perspective is what my question was meaning. If it didn't make sense in an opinion way or is it just out of whack. Cause some endings.. ME3's ending was one that, obviously, is just an opinion.
Nah, actual thought was put into the Bioshock ending. As opposed to slapping together random CG clips. Alright, great. That's always good. I like odd endings that make ya think.
O Thanks! Can't help but feel that the entirety of this convoluted "I got ya" moment is nothing more then a clever story device. From the implementation and the arc of the story one could surmise that the idea of "tricking" the player was the goal, the rest was just a simple way of "clothing" this.
I really like the premise behind the ending, but feel that having "controlled omnipotence" is a cheap cop out that seems highly unrealistic. Perhaps I am just thinking too much into it but like time travel, alternate universes often feel contrived because in reality nobody knows if such things could exist.
Even if it were possible nobody knows what the consequences would be, example; if the coin flipping scenario would always turn to heads, then that takes away the idea of chaos theory in which one small thing could change a larger thing and so on and so forth, which would leave us with a sub-predeterministic reality, in which we have choices of what to do with the hand we are given, but not a choice of the hand you are dealt, which feels woefully inadequate and untrue if higher mathematics and philosophy are taken into account.
Again I may be rambling but insoasfar as the "time travel" story hook, nobody truly knows what would happen if you went back in time to kill your grandfather.
If nobody knows the outcome of a concept, does it not seem like a poor story choice to choose "time travel", or "alternate realities" and just shoehorn whatever literary theme you wanted into it? In theory, if you went back in time to kill your grandfather, you would only kill someone who looked like your grandfather, but wouldn't be your grandfather. Why, because the event of you being there has already happened and cannot be changed. The person you just killed would be another dimensional grandfather.
This will blow you mind! If Comstock Booker was aware of false sheppard booker coming after Elizabeth As he tells booker to explain Elizabeth's finger to her that means booker's reality travel and interference has to happen, right? I just can't figure out how time goes on so that he meets Elizabeth as a year old in columbia, if he tries to interfere when she was a baby.
And all the events leading until old Elizabeth's interference was by the whims of the Lutece's. It was only after they "died" that Booker was brought trough time and space to Columbia. Rapture was only connected by virtue of existing as a dimension. Infinite was about the infinite dimensions that exist. Its like saying 2 stories happened in different locations on the same continent. In one of them you are shown there is this continent in which things happen.
In the other you are unaware of it. See what I'm getting at? Bioshock: Infinite didn't end the universe just stopped Booker from becoming Comstock. Pi is bigger than 3. It begins and ends with a baptism of Booker DeWitt: his rebirth in one set of timelines as antagonist Zachary Comstock, and in another, his eventual realisation that he must sacrifice his life to stop the former event from ever happening.
After his part in the horrific Wounded Knee Massacre , DeWitt is given the choice to have his sins washed away and be baptised as a new man. In one branch of realities he does, growing rich and funding the research of physicist Rosalind Lutece. Armed with her technology, he is able to create "tears" through into other universes and glimpse potential futures. He styles himself a prophet, and builds Columbia with himself as its figurehead. Ironically, it is this baptised version of Booker which does not repent for his actions.
Buoyed by the fame and wealth generated by his borrowed accomplishments, Comstock arms Columbia as an airborne military might, seceding from the United States as his actions become more extreme. Audio diaries describe how he sees other races as The White Man's Burden , with the fantastically-designed Hall of Heroes level a monument to his racist and jingoistic beliefs. Prematurely aged and sterile due to his frequent abuses of the tear technology, the only thing Comstock wants for is an heir.
This is where "our" Booker comes in. Never baptised, he has lived with his sins for several years. Pained by these memories and the recent death of his wife during childbirth, he is a man ruined by drink and gambling debts. Acting through the male Robert Lutece in Booker's universe, Comstock wipes away his debts in payment for his daughter. She is the heir Comstock never had, and able to naturally navigate the multiverse after a last-minute change of heart from Booker sees the tip of her finger left behind when making the jump between realities.
Towards the end of the game, players get a glimpse at how Comstock's universe could continue. In , an aged Elizabeth - broken by torture and bent to Comstock's beliefs - would have overseen Columbia attacking New York, raining down fire and setting the city ablaze. Booker's intervention - the journey players undertake from the opening moments of the game - is designed by the Luteces to stop this. The Luteces are two of the most complex characters in the game.
Audio diaries present Robert Lutece as the more unwilling of the pair, wary of the carnage that Comstock's world will face due to their intervention. He presses Rosalind into recruiting Booker for his rescue mission, but the duo are not entirely driven by compassion.
Like the late Lady Comstock, they know too much about Elizabeth, whose 'miracle birth' is now a vital component of the Comstock cult. It's implied that the Booker which players first meet is the latest of many attempts by the Luteces to get Elizabeth rescued. The pair know Booker will pick ball number 77 during the raffle because he always has. His coin toss comes up heads because, as their tally of previous chalk marks show, it always has.
These are the "constants" that Elizabeth mentions in the final section of the game, and until now have always ended with Booker being killed by Elizabeth's monstrous mechanical jailer, Songbird. These moments are also a knowing joke on the player. The Luteces know Booker won't row the boat at the beginning of the game because they've seen it before and know he never rows the boat.
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