I finished BI on Sunday, haven't been able to stop thinking about and discussing it.
Some friends and I have been talking in email a lot about the characters, settings, themes, etc. I thought I'd post some of my random observations.
Regarding characters:
Comstock - Comstock's character seeing visions and being regarded as a prophet seems to be influenced by
Joseph Smith. Though his "bearded warrior" appearance (Hall of Heroes) also looks to be influenced by the depiction of the abolitionist
John Brown in John Steuart Curry mural Bleeding Kansas:
Brown was a zealot who believed that violence was the only way to end slavery. Quite the opposite of Comstock, who was just fine with racial/ethnic oppression in Columbia.
Fink - I see Fink as an amalgamation of Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and
Albert Speer. He's the inventor, the organizer, and the industrialist. He's a war profiteer, too: He's the 'armaments minister' for Comstock's Founders, yet he also sells technology to the Vox in order to prolong the conflict. His efficient and highly organized factories (in Finkton Dock - did you see the men on their knees scrubbing the floor in time to the rhythm of the music and machinery?) run on the suffering of those he "employs." Very much like the weapons factories of Nazi Germany, in which Albert Speer used "disposable" slave labor to double or triple output.
The Lutece "twins": These two are so heavily influenced by
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Their perspective, their appearances, their subtle comedy, the coin flips... if you're not familiar with the story then check out the Wikipedia article and you'll see.
Influences and similarities between BI and other stories:
One of the first things I thought of after finishing BI was Pink Floyd's "The Wall" - both the album and the movie.
The album "The Wall" begins with the words "we came in?" and ends with the words "Isn't this where", indicating that the story told within the album is an endless cycle.
The Wall is about alienation and Elizabeth grew up alienated from her father and mother as well as from the entire world, locked up in her tower.
In The Wall, Pink's father was a soldier who was killed in World War 2.
In Bioshock Infinite Elizabeth's father "died" in both realities. Booker "died" when he was reborn as Comstock. And Booker "died" in the reality in which he sold Anna to Comstock - she said as much when she reminded Booker that he stayed in his office for the past 20 years, lost in regret and guilt over what he'd done.
In The Wall, the overprotective mother is a central figure in the story. Her overwhelming nature crushes young Pink's free spirit.
In Bioshock Infinite, Comstock keeps Elizabeth locked up in the tower as an extreme form of protection. But even more on point - the Songbird. The Songbird is ferociously protective of her, willing to destroy anyone and anything in its path in order to retrieve Elizabeth - even though its attacks to recover her endangered her and caused her harm. When she first tells Booker about the Songbird she said she loved it as a child because it would visit her and bring her books. But over time she grew to hate the Songbird because she realized it was her jailer.
In The Wall, Pink has a mental breakdown in which he "becomes" his Neo-Nazi alter ego. He hallucinates that he is a dictator, his concert is a rally, and his followers attack minorities. Then he fantasizes about an army of goose stepping hammers that march across the ruins of a city.
In Bioshock Infinite, Elizabeth is captured by the Songbird and taken to Comstock. Booker attempts to rescue her but the Songbird thwarts and kills him. Comstock has Elizabeth tortured and brainwashed to believe that Booker abandoned her, that he truly was the False Shepherd sent to mislead her, and that she should hate him for what he did. Comstock's prophecy told him that he would die before the prophecy's fulfillment and that it would be his seed that carries out the final vision of burning the mountains of man (warping Columbia in through space/time rifts to rain fire onto 'Sodom' aka the cities of the USA and possibly the rest of the world) and with Elizabeth brainwashed and Booker dead, the prophecy is fulfilled. Elizabeth accepts her role as Comstock's successor and warps Columbia to 1984, launching a surprise attack that burns NYC to the ground - that was the vision Booker first had of the burning city at the beginning of the game. She becomes the fanatical leader.
At the end of The Wall is The Trial. All of the subconscious forces that influenced Pink to build "the wall" of isolation put him on trial for showing feelings "of a human nature" - his overprotective mother, his wife, the schoolmaster, the prosecutor, and the judge all stand against him. Pink is found guilty and the wall is violently torn down.
After Elizabeth fulfilled Comstock's prophecy, she becomes regretful over her actions. So ~70 year old Elizabeth writes a note meant for her younger self, explaining how to take control of the Songbird. Then she brings Booker to the future, plucking him from moments after the Songbird took her back to Comstock. She gives Booker the note and sends him back to the past, armed with the information needed to defeat the Songbird and destroy the siphon. Booker rescues Elizabeth before Comstock's torture and brainwashing begin in earnest, thus averting the timeline in which Elizabeth succeeds Comstock and destroys New York. They board Comstock's airship and confront him in a small garden with the intent to kill him. Comstock attempts to rationalize the terrible things he's done, but Booker chokes and then drowns Comstock in a fit of rage over his mistreatment of Elizabeth. Then they take the airship to the tower/siphon and use the Songbird to destroy it - tearing down the wall, as it were. Once the siphon is destroyed Elizabeth's power is uncapped and she is able to see all possible futures. She warps herself, Booker, and the Songbird to the underwater city of Rapture (the setting of Bioshock 1) and drowns the Songbird in the ocean while she tries to comfort it - a mercy killing.
Then Elizabeth and Booker travel to a convergence point between a million different realities - each represented by a lighthouse. She explains constants and variables. She explains that even though Comstock is dead in that particular reality that he still exists in a million others. Booker says he wants to smother Comstock in his crib, preventing him from ever having existed. Elizabeth takes Booker to the scene of the baptism he rejected, explaining that in some realities he walked away and remained Booker DeWitt - and in others he accepted baptism and became Zachary Comstock. Then she and some Elizabeths from other realities proceed to drown Booker, who accepts his fate. A mercy killing of a man who spends his life either inflicting misery upon himself or inflicting misery upon others. The circle is broken: Booker never chooses to remain himself and sell his baby to Comstock. Nor does he choose to accept baptism and become Comstock. My question is - is this also a mercy killing of both Anna and Elizabeth? If Booker dies before choosing whether or not to be baptized then it means not only does "Elizabeth" cease to exist, then so does "Anna" because Booker presumably dies before meeting Anna's mother and getting her pregnant. It's uncertain whether or not Elizabeth could have ever led a normal life, even with the "leash" of the siphon still in place. And an unleashed Elizabeth who was constantly seeing all ends to all worlds would probably have eventually gone mad. Maybe she realized that in order to protect the world from her powers she had to also cease to exist.
One of the final scenes of the film The Wall is of Pink murmuring poems to himself. The poems were later released as full songs by Pink Floyd and Roger Waters. One of them is called Your Possible Pasts, which is obviously relevant in a story about possible outcomes...
they flutter behind you your possible pasts
some bright eyed and crazy some frightened and lost
a warning to anyone still in command
of their possible future to take care
in derelict sidings the poppies entwine
with cattle trucks lying in wait for the next time
do you remember me? how we used to be?
do you thing we should be closer?
she stood in the doorway the ghost of a smile
haunting her face like a cheap hotel sign
her cold eyes imploring the men in their macs
for the gold in their bags or the knives in their backs
stepping up boldly one put out his hand
he said, "i was just a child then now i'm only a man"
do you remember me? how we used to be?
do you thing we should be closer?
by the cold and religious we were taken in hand
shown how to feel good and told to feel bad
tongue tied and terrified we learned how to pray
now our feelings run deep and cold as the clay
and strung out behind us the banners and flags
of our possible pasts lie in tatters and rags
do you remember me? how we used to be?
do you thing we should be closer?
This song is generally interpreted to be a sort of warning to people to not stand idly by while atrocities are being committed - the Holocaust in particular.
I thought the lyrics of this song were very relevant. Looking back at your possible pasts, who you could have been - bright eyed and crazy or frightened and lost. A "warning" to anyone still in command of their possible future to take care - your sense of control of your future may be entirely an illusion, don't be so certain of it. Being taken by the "cold and religious" and indoctrinated about what to feel and when. Desensitized to the brutality that surrounds them, much like the citizens of Columbia who ignored the racism toward and inhumane treatment of other races. "Strung out behind us the banners and flags of our possible pasts lie in tatters and rags" - The game is full of banners and flags, literally. When you first arrive there are countless streaming red, white and blue banners. But once the Vox rise up those banners are tattered and destroyed, replaced with the long streaming red banners of the Vox (which grow more more numerous as you progress, culminating with the long red streaming banners covering the Vox zeppelins during the final battle.) You're altering possible futures and pasts as you open tears and shift the balance of the revolution in favor of the Vox.
I really can't wait to dig back in to see all the things I missed the first time around. Irrational put so much into the character dialogue, recordings, etc. It really is something else.
I hope FartOfWar is keeping tabs on this thread. If this were still the GFW Radio days I'd be really anxious to hear his whole deconstruction of this game. I hope he's feeling good about having been involved with producing the type of game that he would have spent a lot of time discussing in earnest if he were still a journalist.
