SPOILER Bioshock Infinite SPOILER discussion

The only spoiler I had was Elizabeth killing Booker from the OT.

Turns out it wasn't even all that bad of a spoiler, didn't affect my enjoyment of the ending. I'm just glad "Goin' back to Rapture" wasn't spoiled. That's the big one for me.

Ugh, were you there for that mattfabb asshole too? Booker is Comstock, Liz is his daughter and Liz kills him. All 3. Still pisses me off so much.
 
i think that was just booker having his daughter back now that comstock isnt around to take her.

Yup. ViewtifulJC had a very nice post summing it up nicely: in the end, after we get past all those Lincoln robots, vigor combos, skyhooks, and the time warping bullshit, the story of this game is a guilty, self-destructive man desperately trying to reunite with his daughter. That's exactly what the final moments show.
 
How is it obvious? I never got any hint throughout the game that Elizabeth would end up killing Booker. How do you come that that conclusion?

Maybe it's just obvious because when the game was revealed my first thoughts were "Either Booker kills Elizabeth or Elizabeth kills Booker". It's just where I expected the game to go.

I'd say it's easy to ascertain that there is no happy ending between the two when she knocks you out on the airship.
 
about the ending and post-credit: I think we still dont know if the pattern broke tho.

I mean it is implied that it did, in the sense that Booker has the memories of the whole thing because he goes "anna is that you?" as in realizing that he/she wasnt supposed to be there

because basically Booker always does this. It is implied that he's tried to do this who knows how many times, and every time he ends up building new memories every time he goes through, thus not knowing that he's been through all of this before



It was never a factor, it's impossible to know because one way or the other it would have never happened

so there's infinite universes for an infinite number of choices, but they never make the cool ones?
 
ooohhh, link?

there's something about going into fantasy land for game endings that rubs me the wrong way, probably because it's becoming increasingly prevelant:

spec ops
metro 2033
far cry 3

and then you have elizibeth speaking very cryptically when in a more realistic scenario the person would clearly just be like "ok dude, heres the deal, in one universe you accepted the baptism and became a religious nut, in another you didnt, and became a badass motherfucker. im going to prevent all the bad universes but going back to that choice and drowning you, or we can just dip and go to paris."

Infinite was in development years before all of those games you listed. It took longer to create, and release, because it was a much more ambitious title.
 
But is it the player's "Booker" or another Booker. Is most likely a Booker in another dimension different from the one where the game took place.

for all we know that's still the Booker who sold his daughter and it's imagining things/lamenting over selling her away, and the loop is beggining again.

I mean it's obviously meant to be up to anyone's interpretation, it's not just a happy ending post-credit sequence once you think about it

so there's infinite universes for an infinite number of choices, but they never make the cool ones?

pretty much. Because they already didnt do it the first time
 
Yup. ViewtifulJC had a very nice post summing it up nicely: in the end, after we get past all those Lincoln robots, vigor combos, skyhooks, and the time warping bullshit, the story of this game is a guilty, self-destructive man desperately trying to reunite with his daughter. That's exactly what the final moments show.

hmm, so then would you say that the story is ultimately about redemption afterall?
 
But is it the player's "Booker" or another Booker. Is most likely a Booker in another dimension different from the one where the game took place.

I concur it's a different Booker although he probably has memories of the other many Bookers so he's aware which is why he screamed for Anna when he woke up.
 
Whats the story with the dlc anyway? I suspect we won't be touching upon Booker again as Ken seems to like to keep his stories open to an individuals interpretation to an extent.
 
thing is, the one that reports the whole thing on the voxaphones is her, and she wouldnt grow memories since she's always been there

I mean, I think her mentioning him as her brother could be just a way to not let other people know the truth

that line does seal the fact that she realized the "bringing other people from tears" thing worked by bringing in that brother/version of her. It was the ultimate way to test it so Comstock could do the same with his daughter

I expect it's a cover-up in case anybody else discovers the vox. I'm not sure that anything explicitly says that they're the same person but with them originally communicating be researching the same particle that existed in 2 realities at the same time, the way they finish each others sentences, the fact a statue of the male Lutece tears into the female Lutece early in the game and so on it's pretty clear they're meant to be the same person.
 
I concur it's a different Booker although he probably has memories of the other many Bookers so he's aware which is why he screamed for Anna when he woke up.

I dont think it's that obvious or probable. It is constantly mentioned how he suffered in her room and lived with regret/lament. He could very well be just new Booker going through the exact same cycle again and imagining things due to being messed up from selling her away.
 
Guys, I just remembered something written on a statue in the garden after being baptized in the opening.

"What is Columbia, if not another ark for another time?"

God damn you Levine, GOD DAMN YOU.
 
DLC I want to see but probably won't (as I can't think of gameplay that could happen - just story)


Comstock and how he creates this city so fully in the span of 22 years (battle of wounded knee is 1890, game is set in 1912). The city also seems finished, you don't really see anything new being constructed. They can really explore the underclass/slave narrative in deeper terms than "abused workers now uprising, leader just as bad as what she is trying to replace."



Lady Comstock and her death.



Letuce "twins" and how they started to figure all of this dimensional stuff out, and how exactly they contributed to the creation of the city. This can maybe be done through the male's eyes since he said he knew what Booker had been through (because he had himself)



I don't see any gameplay in those though :/ All I can really imagine is being a part of the uprising and killing dudes...
 
Might be a slight subtle hint in the direction of the dlc. Read into this as you will but just opened up the strategy guide and and the single player section is listed as 'Booker's Campaign'. Maybe he's has his 15mins and we might get to see another perspective?

That would be awesome.
 
I dont think it's that obvious or probable. It is constantly mentioned how he suffered in her room and lived with regret/lament. He could very well be just new Booker going through the exact same cycle again and imagining things due to being messed up from selling her away.

I don't want to believe that. It's like purgatory :(
 
Guys, I just remembered something written on a statue in the garden after being baptized in the opening.

"What is Columbia, if not another ark for another time?"

God damn you Levine, GOD DAMN YOU.

The whole "what is Columbia, if not.. [something]" was used throughout the game many times, and I think that more than anything they are meant to draw the conclusion that Andrew Ryan and Comstock and Columbia and Rapture are very much the same thing just in different branching universes.
 
I dont think it's that obvious or probable. It is constantly mentioned how he suffered in her room and lived with regret/lament. He could very well be just new Booker going through the exact same cycle again and imagining things due to being messed up from selling her away.

I think there might a feeling of peace within him now. He doesn't have the memories of his hardships but he does have the benefits of redemption lifting the emotional weight and weaknesses away and there wont be the temptation of selling Anna/Elizabeth now so he will probably have the time and the means to become a better man. So in other words the same man from another world reach by his own redemption.
 
hmm, so then would you say that the story is ultimately about redemption afterall?

In a sense. Redemption wears thin once he enters that tear because then he forms a memory that he's there for his debt. But you can tell they have father-daughter chemistry throughout the whole game, up until the end where he beats Comstock out of rage, like a father would do for his daughter.
 
I think there might a feeling of peace within him now. He doesn't have the memories of his hardships but he does benefits of redemption lifting the emotional away weight and weaknesses and there wont be the temptation of selling Anna/Elizabeth now so he will probably have the time and the means to become a better man.

well, we'll never know

it basically boils down to this:

either he broke the cycle, at least enough to mantain those memories

or nothing changed, everything that happened was meant to happen and it all just started again
 
also, i gotta say, i was expecting a much more dramatic scene to go a long with

"booker, are you afraid of god?"

"no, but im afraid of you."

that was just... random.

I agree with this. I waited the entire game to see what ridiculous grim circumstances could cause Booker to say something like that to Elizabeth.

And then BAM, it's basically just small talk during a transition after a combat segment.

I don't even understand Booker saying it in the context it actually happened.
 
I see what you're saying. So the only explanation of post-credits Booker is one of the Bookers that never went to the baptism in the first place, correct?

That's my best understanding of that scene at the moment. Given infinite universes, it's not hard to believe there's one where he still got married and had his wife die in childbirth without a detour to that pond first.

I took this as meaning that the loop started again. I'm of the opinion that the events at the end of the game were only for the player-slash-the-booker-the-player-was-playing-as's benefit. It's impossible to make any sense of the them otherwise. The only other explanation is that it's an accidental plot hole - which I doubt given the amount of work that went into this game.

The Booker you were was not the Booker that could have made the choice at the baptism, his shot at that choice had already been made. The whole ending has to be for his edification, it's Elizabeth filling in the blanks for him, showing him what he had done. Otherwise there should have been two Bookers in every instance of those events (the baptism, giving away Anna, chasing down Constock to try and get Anna back, etc.) The Booker you played as was completely out of the time loop for those events, he was from 20 years AFTER he had already given away Anna, those choices were just simply not his to make. It was a farce. Elizabeth loved him, but she also detested him for straight up selling and abandoning her (remember how violently she reacted when she thought her mother had done the same). She put down that version of him peacefully, like a puppy. Drowning that version of him made no difference to the timeline, it was just to bring closure to the story of her Booker. Don't forget at least a dozen of him (probably many more) had already been set on that path and failed before you got there as the player.

You bring up something I wanted to talk about, which is the nature of consciousness across universes. Booker dies several times throughout the game. Yet you, the player as Booker, have an uninterrupted experience of the plot of the game as a singular consciousness. Furthermore, when Booker and Elizabeth move Lin's tools by stepping into a different universe, he has both his memories and that of the Booker of that universe. This seems to support the possibility of all copies of Booker among the universes sharing one consciousness. That would explain why Booker is finally able to let Elizabeth kill him--he is the same person in another universe's version of his body, and why it's the player who can experience the post-credit scene. That consciousness moved from one body to another after being drowned--it was his reward for his atonement.

I haven't had time to reflect on what this means thematically, but I get the impression that this interpretation may have been intended to understand the experience.
 
HOLY SHIT!!!! I just finished the game and omg. What an ending, what a game.

I posted a few times in this thread when I was about 4-5 hours in that I wasn't too impressed. Welp, 8 hours later and this is my GotY so far. Wow. As someone who has a little girl the ending hit me harder than I would have expected.
 
I like how the story can get away with explaining so many videogame tropes

like, for every "press F to do this" you can just stand there but the event wont change. Everyone will just keep standing there doing nothing (not crossing the tear, comstock not taking elizabeth, etc) until you do your move and it's really videogamey and stupid, but the story works it in and it makes sense within it, because you are always going to make that choice no matter how long you take.
 
The whole "what is Columbia, if not.. [something]" was used throughout the game many times, and I think that more than anything they are meant to draw the conclusion that Andrew Ryan and Comstock and Columbia and Rapture are very much the same thing just in different branching universes.

Huh. See I always saw Rapture as having allusions to Atlantis (society of intellectuals wanting to break away but ending up in disarray) and can see some themes of Sermon on the Mount especially Salt and Light with Colombia. I'm probably over thinking it though.
 
Anybody else find 1999 mode pretty disappointing? All the "weapon specialization" stuff Irrational was talking about seems like complete hooey.

It's not incorrect. You're really tight on change half the time, so you can barely afford to upgrade all the weapons you want. I mean I'm about 1/3 the way through my play through and I can't afford to buy squat :(
 
I agree with this. I waited the entire game to see what ridiculous grim circumstances could cause Booker to say something like that to Elizabeth.

And then BAM, it's basically just small talk during a transition after a combat segment.

I don't even understand Booker saying it in the context it actually happened.

This is literally minutes after Booker watched her open a tear to use a fucking TORNADO to rip apart the laboratory the scientists were using to experiment on her.

I'd be pretty terrified of that woman at that point too.
 
That's my best understanding of that scene at the moment. Given infinite universes, it's not hard to believe there's one where he still got married and had his wife die in childbirth without a detour to that pond first.



You bring up something I wanted to talk about, which is the nature of consciousness across universes. Booker dies several times throughout the game. Yet you, the player as Booker, have an uninterrupted experience of the plot of the game as a singular consciousness. Furthermore, when Booker and Elizabeth move Lin's tools by stepping into a different universe, he has both his memories and that of the Booker of that universe. This seems to support the possibility of all copies of Booker among the universes sharing one consciousness. That would explain why Booker is finally able to let Elizabeth kill him--he is the same person in another universe's version of his body, and why it's the player who can experience the post-credit scene. That consciousness moved from one body to another after being drowned--it was his reward for his atonement.

I haven't had time to reflect on what this means thematically, but I get the impression that this interpretation may have been intended to understand the experience.

Like pointed out above its probably that the memories don't exist but the feeling of redemption does.
 
HOLY SHIT!!!! I just finished the game and omg. What an ending, what a game.

I posted a few times in this thread when I was about 4-5 hours in that I wasn't too impressed. Welp, 8 hours later and this is my GotY so far. Wow. As someone who has a little girl the ending hit me harder than I would have expected.

It's a nice club to be in, Bioshock Infinite lovers, I mean.
 
This is literally minutes after Booker watched her open a tear to use a fucking TORNADO to rip apart the laboratory the scientists were using to experiment on her.

I'd be pretty terrified of that woman at that point too.

Wait, she did that on purpose? I thought at that point Elizabeth could still only open Tears she found, and was incapable of creating/forcing new ones.

I remember thinking during that scene how lucky it was that even though we were 15,000 feet or more in the sky, there just *happened* to be a tear that led to the opening minutes of the Wizard of Oz.
 
The way it seems, the Lutece's have gone through this multiple times. Most times, Booker is killed by Songbird (as elderly Elizabeth explains).

Regarding the Lutece's
As people have said, "He doesn't row?" vs "He DOESN'T row" is the female Lutece's misunderstanding of Robert (male Lutece) statement. "He doesn't row" can be understood as "Booker doesn't do rowing", instead of what it actually means which is "He DOESN'T row" as in "No, he's never rowed before when we were at this part".

I also assume that the coin flipping was a factor of the Lutece's bordom, going through this until the cycle is broken. They ask Booker to flip the coin every time he gets to that point, and it's always the same result.

---

As for Bioshock: Infinite DLC, I'd love to see some 'Fall of Columbia' online madness. Imagine two teams trying to protect their airships, while other players try to skyline into them. It could probably be the most fun online FPS experience of the decade.
 
You bring up something I wanted to talk about, which is the nature of consciousness across universes. Booker dies several times throughout the game. Yet you, the player as Booker, have an uninterrupted experience of the plot of the game as a singular consciousness. Furthermore, when Booker and Elizabeth move Lin's tools by stepping into a different universe, he has both his memories and that of the Booker of that universe. This seems to support the possibility of all copies of Booker among the universes sharing one consciousness. That would explain why Booker is finally able to let Elizabeth kill him--he is the same person in another universe's version of his body, and why it's the player who can experience the post-credit scene. That consciousness moved from one body to another after being drowned--it was his reward for his atonement.

I haven't had time to reflect on what this means thematically, but I get the impression that this interpretation may have been intended to understand the experience.

I think that's very clearly implied.

In the sense that whenever someone cross through a tear they start getting memories from their other-self in that universe, thus showing that they all somewhat share a same conciousness


edit: ah, forgot about a plot point with what I said here next
 
Huh. See I always saw Rapture as having allusions to Atlantis (society of intellectuals wanting to break away but ending up in disarray) and can see some themes of Sermon on the Mount especially Salt and Light with Colombia. I'm probably over thinking it though.

they are different but the same

it all boils down to two "arks" trying to get the best of humanity together to create the allegedly "perfect" society away from common society's democracy and what have you

the intent is obviously different, whereas Comstock does it as a sort of calling from god and Andrew Ryan is just tired of everyone's bullshit
 
I like how the story can get away with explaining so many videogame tropes

like, for every "press F to do this" you can just stand there but the event wont change. Everyone will just keep standing there doing nothing (not crossing the tear, comstock not taking elizabeth, etc) until you do your move and it's really videogamey and stupid, but the story works it in and it makes sense within it, because you are always going to make that choice no matter how long you take.

If you keep standing with the Lutece (their name seems pre-pluralized so I'm dropping the S) after the coin flip, FemLutece's third piece of dialog says "If you keep standing here, I'm going to have to start repeating myself." Which is amazing.
 
what do people dont understand/want to explain about Songbird?

it's just Infinite's Big Daddy. It's a mutation of sorts meant to protect an asset. In Bioshock it was Ryan trying to protect little sisters from the Splicers and here it's making sure Elizabeth stays in her tower.
 
what is it with the 122 number and bioshock? Is it known and I just missed it? 1-2-2 for the bell code. The flip a coin scene in the beginning with 122 hashes on the board, Im sure there is others.
 
I feel like enough was implied about Songbird in the Voxaphone to give context, but as a character he sucked...

We just don't need more of him at all.
 
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