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[Luxorek]

Oh Jesus. Abbreviaton for Booker DeWiit is BD, like dadadada... Big Daddy ! I wonder if they did it on purpose.

[OdanUrr]

Luxorek wrote...

Oh Jesus. Abbreviaton for Booker DeWiit is BD, like dadadada... Big Daddy ! I wonder if they did it on purpose.

It's more likely due to this guy:

http://en.wikipedia....ki/Bryce_DeWitt

[Luxorek]

OdanUrr wrote...
It's more likely due to this guy:

http://en.wikipedia....ki/Bryce_DeWitt

Yeah, it seems more likely. Certain even. But it's a nice coincidence nonetheless. 

[Cyberfrog81]

OdanUrr wrote...

I almost forgot. Booker's commitment to getting Fitzroy's guns propels us from one universe to the next. Doesn't that defeat the point of getting back the airship from Fitzroy? Think about it, while the gunsmith may be alive in another universe, does that mean he'll supply the much-needed guns? Or that Fitzroy even has a deal with Booker in this universe? Or that Fitzroy or a rebellion even exist? I suppose one could suggest that Elizabeth is creating universes very similar to the one we start from, but why does neither character ponder this? Wouldn't it be easier to find an alternate means of transport than mess with the space-time continuum?

Yes, I asked myself the same questions. Getting different transportation would be the logical choice, whether they wanted to go to Paris, New York or somewhere else.

But Elizabeth is not acting rationally, and Booker is incapable of abandoning her. She doesn't fully understand her abilities at that point. She opens all those tears to aid Booker in combat and what not, and they all lead to something useful. She calls it a form of wish fulfillment. Thus, she concludes that the alternate realities have what they need. It is fair to say that Booker should've been considering other options, but he allows himself to be steered by Elizabeth and the Luteces. Why? I can only go with vague notions of repressed guilt and a desperate need for redemption.

Which brings us to the ending. First off, this is not the Stargate version of the concept. Always a lighthouse, always a man, always a city? This is obviously a work of fiction that comes with its own set of rules (even though the rules aren't necessarily all that clear). So although there may be a "million million" Comstocks, the Elizabeths (presumably intuitively working together) with their god-likeness are able to understand and influence all those realities enough so that a single Comstock "smothered in the crib" erases ALL of the Comstocks (*) forever. So yeah, unless one is accepting of a character that has the powers of a god, the story doesn't really work -- usually not ideal, but I'm largely OK with it in this case.




(*) Should there be "good Comstocks"? Realistically (if that word even applies), yeah, but in this story -- no, I don't think so. The basic idea seems to have been: You shouldn't try to wash away your sins, you live with them no matter how much it hurts. I feel the story justifies making the assumption that all the Bookers who took the Comstock name embraced the rebirth concept in the extreme, and that these are the ones who will be erased.

Modifié par Cyberfrog81, 01 avril 2013 - 10:06 .

[VoodooDrackus]

AtreiyaN7 wrote...

Dang it, I had a long post and accidentally hit the wrong key after reading two endings-related articles that I agreed with. *mutter*

I basically agree with the authors of the articles in http://venturebeat.c...ng-explanation/ and http://atthebuzzersh...t-it-all-means/

You really shouldn't take what those two articles say to heart. They both get things wrong in the story which means that their explaining of the ending is probably wrong as well.

They both insist that all of the Elizabeth's vanish, they do not. One remains.
One claims that Booker killed thousands of African- Americans and that is why he is going to be baptized to wash away his sins.  To mistake the Sioux in South Dakota in 1890 as African-American is pretty bad. It tells me the person isn't really paying attention to all of the details.
They both mention that Anna is crying after the credits. She is not. He does open the door and the crib is there, but it is unknown if the child is there or not. (the Inception inspired ending)
Booker does not agree to die, nor does he kill himself. You see him struggle as the 3 Elizabeth's drown him.

AtreiyaN7 wrote...

Everyone seems wrapped up in the quantum physics and whether or not the devs' interpretation of the many worlds hypothesis is "correct," but come on. I think people are getting too hung up on the technical details when you're perfectly free to riff on a scientific hypothesis in a game or novel and not be 100% scientifically accurate. Also, I think people are ignoring one important "constant" in the game: the fact that across the many universes and worlds, Booker's love for his daughter never wavered.

Lets discount the fact that Bryce DeWitt's "Many Worlds Interpretation" was the obvious inspiration for Infinite.

Booker's love for his daughter did in fact waver. He gives her up and then he realizes that isn't what he should be doing. That is pretty much the definition of wavering.

The main issue is that Elizabeth becomes a God like being in the end (A Deus Ex Machina), which at that point there is no point. She can do whatever she wants. She chooses to be sadistic with Booker in the end. How she talks to him (the condescending "Really?" when he tells her "this is the man that hired me to find you" ) and the fact that she kills him. With that much power she could have done so much more instead of torturing/manipulating her father when he was not the one (the non-baptized one) who took her and locked her up. That fantasy was already played out. Guess what, all of the other Bookers will still be living with the horror of slaughtering Native Americans, one of the reasons he gambled and drunk away his life in the first place.

Plus if you eliminate the one person (Comstock) that creates Elizabeth (i.e., the daughter that is in both universes at once via her finger) then there would no longer be any Elizabeth's, she would have undone herself. But you clearly see that one Elizabeth remains as the camera pans up which means there has to be a Comstock in a universe somewhere that takes the child from Booker. (An argument could be that the last Elizabeth vanishes with the last note, except we see all of the other Elizabeth's fade out with the notes. We do not see the last one fade out with the last note, we just see the screen fade to black.)


Here are some questions.
Why does the priest not notice when the multi-Elizabeth's drown Booker? He is still there asking his name.
Why does Elizabeth never get hurt by explosions, electricity, crossfire, fire, etc.? For example, I had boots that when I landed would set off a ring of fire. It damages allies like the Vox, but never damaged her.


The only sound reasoning which explains everything is that it is all in his head; he has been torturing himself for years.
Sadly, I do not think that is the case.

[Chewin]

[quote]VoodooDrackus wrote...

Booker does not agree to die, nor does he kill himself. You see him struggle as the 3 Elizabeth's drown him.[/quote]

No, he allows himself to be drowned, and he does it b/c as he states himself, it is the only way to undo what Booker has done to her. He doesn't struggle when he is put under water, but naturally he starts when he is drowning, since it's not an easy way to die.

[quote]Why does the priest not notice when the multi-Elizabeth's drown Booker? He is still there asking his name.[/quote]

Pretty sure you could find countless of different reasons as to why he doesn't mention anything. I think it has to do with him not technically existing at all since he suddenly disappears, and if that was ment to be the place where Booker got baptised, he is suddenly alone with the priest, instead of being surrounded by people. Of course that could be an alternate dimension where he accepted the baptism and there were no people there. But as I said, you can find all sorts of reasons, though I don't think there's a right one.

[quote]Why does Elizabeth never get hurt by explosions, electricity, crossfire, fire, etc.? For example, I had boots that when I landed would set off a ring of fire. It damages allies like the Vox, but never damaged her.[/quote]

Pretty sure that's only for gameplay reasons, nothing more.


The only sound reasoning which explains everything is that it is all in his head; he has been torturing himself for years.
Sadly, I do not think that is the case.[/quote]

[Giltspur]

Sidney wrote...

In Exile wrote...

He seemed to know DeWitt in that segment, and was talking to your character as if he were a separate person from Comstock in his timeline. 

Two repsonses, but 2 different subjects didn't want it all in the same mass of text repsonse.....

Slate always treated Booker as a different man than Comstock. He clearly knows DeWitt since he served with him. My question is still if he knows that DeWitt is just another aspect of Comstock (or really the other way around) or if he doesn't know Comstock = DeWitt how are we suppposed to accept that?

Maybe it's due to Comstock aging (and decaying) rapidly due to using the Lutece machine for what he thinks is prophecy.  So even if he looks physically similar, he's too old for what Booker should be for Slate to make the connection that Booker became Comstock.

http://bioshock.wiki...rophet_is_Dying

Now, I know we lack exact details on what Comstock would have looked like when Slate first arrived and when the aging started and how rapid it was.  But it seems like they've attempted to account for why Comstock might be unrecognizable.

Modifié par Giltspur, 02 avril 2013 - 11:32 .

[Brockololly]

Just finished the game last night and enjoyed it a great deal. The ending was a little anti climactic since I sort of figured Booker=Comstock and all of the multiple timelines, so that final reveal was kind of just confirming what I expected.

My only big qualm with the ending was how strange and cold the various Elizabeths were when they drowned Booker. Them all saying in unison "Smother" was just kind of bizarre, considering that Booker just went through a ton to save Elizabeth and has just been revealed that he's her father.

I don't have any issue with that ending with Booker drowning, just the presentation of it felt really out of sorts. I guess I just wanted a little more reaction to the Booker=Comstock reveal instead of revealing it and then killing Booker. Like, have a little heart to heart with Elizabeth before she kills you, especially since she's effectively killing herself as well. Something maybe a little more heartfelt like the good ending to Bioshock.

The Spoiler thread over at NeoGAF has some very good explanations to everything and a nice timeline chart that tries to explain things:

Modifié par Brockololly, 03 avril 2013 - 08:39 .

[Sidney]

VoodooDrackus wrote...

They both insist that all of the Elizabeth's vanish, they do not. One remains.
One claims that Booker killed thousands of African- Americans and that is why he is going to be baptized to wash away his sins.  To mistake the Sioux in South Dakota in 1890 as African-American is pretty bad. It tells me the person isn't really paying attention to all of the details.
They both mention that Anna is crying after the credits. She is not. He does open the door and the crib is there, but it is unknown if the child is there or not. (the Inception inspired ending)
Booker does not agree to die, nor does he kill himself. You see him struggle as the 3 Elizabeth's drown him.

While I guess you could intrepret one surviving Liz because of the black out I didn't see that at all. Each note means one Liz vanishes. There is one note played for each Liz on the screen. Can't recall the exact # but there are 6 Lizes and 6 notes. Each note "erases" a Liz therefore there are none left and the screen goes black because that "reality" is now gone with the death of "your" Liz.. Plus, the whole point of drowning DeWitt is to end Comstock. No Comstock = No Liz because Comstock creates Liz from Anna.

That's bad history but not knowing the ethnicity of the victims of Wounded Knee hardly invalidates your reading of the ending....plus at least he's not one of those people who thought it was a "arrow to the knee" Skyrim rif.

Booker agrees that Comstock must die. The only way to end Comstock is to stop his "birth". That is what he agrees to. I didn't see any real struggling. There's nothing that looks like resistance of a grown man in fighting trim against some not very large women.

[Giltspur]

I think part of the reason Elizabeth is so stoic is because she's killing herself as well.  As religious themes go, she's dying for her own sins and to save the world from those 1983's where she burns everything down.

http://bioshock.wiki...red_in_the_Crib

It's an interesting idea: that she can find redemption and have in a sense lived a good life by choosing to unmake her life.  She's also, with his permission, helping redeem her father (as she smothers him) by leaving only the Booker that will choose to raise his daughter instead of abandon her.

EDIT: Adding a paragraph.

All in all, I liked the ending because it made it caused me to think about Booker's and Elizabeth's takes on personal atonement.  The many worlds stuff was a just a device for showing that and, while neat and perhaps nonsensical, not the most important thing to me.

EDIT: New paragraph.

Having lived a good life without having existed.  Aristotle talks of eudaimonia.  People argue over what it means.  It's not pleasure.  It's some kind of happiness.  And what puzzles people is he mentions you can have an increase in eudaimonia even after you're dead.  Perhaps it's having lived in such a way that you contribute to the welfare of the world after death without ever having felt the pleasure or contentment that could accompany such a thing.  And Elizabeth is arguably making a personal sacrifice for a eudaimonia that doesn't just exist in death as Aristotle suggested but in non-existence.  And, hey, Aristotle didn't know about the many worlds theory like Elizabeth did.  For what it's worth, thinking in that matter shifted me from feeling sad for Elizabeth and more towards admiring her decisions.

Modifié par Giltspur, 03 avril 2013 - 09:57 .

[Sidney]

Giltspur wrote...

I think part of the reason Elizabeth is so stoic is because she's killing herself as well.  As religious themes go, she's dying for her own sins and to save the world from those 1983's where she burns everything down.

http://bioshock.wiki...red_in_the_Crib

It's an interesting idea: that she can find redemption and have in a sense lived a good life by choosing to unmake her life.  She's also, with his permission, helping redeem her father (as she smothers him) by leaving only the Booker that will choose to raise his daughter instead of abandon her.

This is why the ending is so sad. Booker being "killed" isn't sad. Liz has chosen not even to kill herself but to select non-existence rather than allow what Comstock and she unleach on the world. Nothing in the ME3 ending comes close to making me feel as bad as that does.

[Cyberfrog81]

Giltspur wrote...

I think part of the reason Elizabeth is so stoic is because she's killing herself as well.

That and she's keeping track of every single "door" which has Comstock-took-Anna-from-Booker behind it. I think being a little "distant" can be excused, considering. As a bonus this can also help explain the creepy "smothered"s from the Elizabeths.

[VoodooDrackus]

Sidney wrote...

VoodooDrackus wrote...

They both insist that all of the Elizabeth's vanish, they do not. One remains.
One claims that Booker killed thousands of African- Americans and that is why he is going to be baptized to wash away his sins.  To mistake the Sioux in South Dakota in 1890 as African-American is pretty bad. It tells me the person isn't really paying attention to all of the details.
They both mention that Anna is crying after the credits. She is not. He does open the door and the crib is there, but it is unknown if the child is there or not. (the Inception inspired ending)
Booker does not agree to die, nor does he kill himself. You see him struggle as the 3 Elizabeth's drown him.

While I guess you could intrepret one surviving Liz because of the black out I didn't see that at all. Each note means one Liz vanishes. There is one note played for each Liz on the screen. Can't recall the exact # but there are 6 Lizes and 6 notes. Each note "erases" a Liz therefore there are none left and the screen goes black because that "reality" is now gone with the death of "your" Liz.. Plus, the whole point of drowning DeWitt is to end Comstock. No Comstock = No Liz because Comstock creates Liz from Anna.

That's bad history but not knowing the ethnicity of the victims of Wounded Knee hardly invalidates your reading of the ending....plus at least he's not one of those people who thought it was a "arrow to the knee" Skyrim rif.

Booker agrees that Comstock must die. The only way to end Comstock is to stop his "birth". That is what he agrees to. I didn't see any real struggling. There's nothing that looks like resistance of a grown man in fighting trim against some not very large women.

There are 7 notes when showing the Elizabeth's after the drowning. There are 8 Elizabeth's at one point. 2 come up to help drown Booker. When the camera goes to a wide shot from behind there are 6. An Elizabeth does not fade out on the first note at this point. 5 Elizabeth's fade out for each subsequent note. The last note does NOT have the central Elizabeth fade out. It pans up and the screen fades to black.

If you watch that ending again you will notice that he clearly struggles as they are drowning him, he is trying to break free which is hard to do when you are under water.

Maybe this will make more sense: If the whole point is to make sure that there will never be a Comstock by killing Booker before a choice could ever be made on whether to get baptized or not then the Scene after the Credits would never happen. Booker would no longer exist at that moment where he has a crib that could have a child in it and more importantly calling Anna's name.
 
The sequence of events has always been Booker just came from Wounded Knee and either chooses to be baptized or doesn't. 
If he does he becomes Comstock and pursues the city in the sky. If he doesn't then he gets married, she dies in childbirth, he gambles to the point he is given a way out.
Booker being back at his office shows that he still exists. Him opening the door and there being a crib there and calling Anna's name shows that it is long after that choice on whether to be baptized or not.
 
Just look at that handy timeline in a previous comment and you will see that I am correct. If we take your viewpoint that all Elizabeth's have blinked out of existence, then that means all Booker's would have died before making a choice on whether to be baptized or not and Anna would never have been born thus we would never get the scene we do after the credits.

[Sidney]

VoodooDrackus wrote...
Just look at that handy timeline in a previous comment and you will see that I am correct. If we take your viewpoint that all Elizabeth's have blinked out of existence, then that means all Booker's would have died before making a choice on whether to be baptized or not and Anna would never have been born thus we would never get the scene we do after the credits.

At the drowning scenes there are I think 8 by my count (but they are moving about so I might be double counting) but when the camera swings around for the crane shot there are only 6 and they all vanish per keystroke. There is a last keystroke/note after there is only one Liz left.

Booker is dying, clearly, but there is nothing struggling - you never see his hands, there is no violent movement from his point of view under the water. You hear gasping for air but no effort from the PoV to get to air.

The Bookers that die are the Bookers making the Comstock choice. The Lizes vanish because once Comstock is gone she doesn't exist either - Comstock creates Liz by his actions. Smothered in his crib Comstock and Liz both vanish in the same action. That means that the unBaptized Booker goes on with his life in his timelines and produces Anna. Liz may never exist but Anna clearly does bcause she doesn't depend on the baptism to happen.

[Luxorek]

I still don't like the forcefully introduced 6 month gap. I mean, we are told that in every universe at this point Booker was stopped by Songbird... every time. To break that loop he had to be send into the future [and then into the past, that was still the future...] by older Elizabeth. I mean, come on game! You want me to believe in possibilites and variables, but at random points in the story somehow there are "constants" that no one except Elizabeth can overcome.

[Gibb_Shepard]

I agree Luxorek. And it really undermines the Lutece banter at the beginning of the game, something that has become frequently quoted by those who have played the game.

Robert tells us how Booker "DOESN'T" row, as in he never has and will never row. But how could he deem that a constant, but not deem Booker's failure a constant, seeing as he has seen Booker not row as many times as he has seen him get gobbled up by Songbird?

Why did he believe Booker's success to be a variable and not the fact that he doesn't row? Why did Granny Liz choose now to aid Booker, and not on his 54th try?

[Isichar]

Gibb_Shepard wrote...

Why did he believe Booker's success to be a variable and not the fact that he doesn't row? Why did Granny Liz choose now to aid Booker, and not on his 54th try?

Both the act of not rowing and him getting defeated by songbird can be considered constants, the difference is with Elizabeth who had the ability to break the rules as you see in the story. She was not with Booker at the time of the rowing, nor would her changing that constant have any realistic effect on anything.

I am guessing the reason future Elizabeth chose that moment to bring Booker to her is because that variation of Elizabeth was originally taken from Booker at that moment, in which he was never able to get her back, so she it makes sense that she does it during a time that he can understand whats going on and that he can't beat the songbird. Just a guess though.

[OdanUrr]

Luxorek wrote...

I still don't like the forcefully introduced 6 month gap.

Booker was propelled several years into the future, 72 years to be accurate. The 6 months mentioned in the time tears is how long it passed from the moment Songbird took Elizabeth to the day of her surgery.

[Luxorek]

OdanUrr wrote...
The 6 months mentioned in the time tears is how long it passed from the moment Songbird took Elizabeth to the day of her surgery.

I know that. It's exactly what I meant.

Anyway, I have to say that the game feels a little like Frankenstein monster - sewed from various bits. It's obvious now, given the troubled development and all the content that didn't make the cut, but still - this damn game could have been so much better in some places that it's not even funny.

[OdanUrr]

Luxorek wrote...

OdanUrr wrote...
The 6 months mentioned in the time tears is how long it passed from the moment Songbird took Elizabeth to the day of her surgery.

I know that. It's exactly what I meant.

Anyway, I have to say that the game feels a little like Frankenstein monster - sewed from various bits. It's obvious now, given the troubled development and all the content that didn't make the cut, but still - this damn game could have been so much better in some places that it's not even funny.

If you compare the final product with previews, demos, etc., you can see it changed quite a bit. I will never forgive them for cutting Elizabeth's Lincoln moment.

[Luxorek]

With Lincoln, I guess they realized it woudn't make much sense for people of Columbia [xenophobic, jingoistic, racist] to "worship" a person like him considering his part in emancipation of slaves. Why didn't they realize it sooner, I have no idea. Unless, of course, the whole "race" war stuff wasn't originally in the picture and Vox was more of a communist insurection or something along these lines [which it was, just look at all that red and the things that they say]. That 15 min gameplay is from a year ago and a clearly a lot has changed.

Modifié par Luxorek, 05 avril 2013 - 12:59 .

[Savber100]

Do you know what would have been cool?

Me as Booker looking at Elizabeth and saying: Do it.

I mean SOMETHING that was at least more heartfelt than Elizabeth coldly drowning Booker, who was shocked by the sudden reveal.

[Sidney]

Savber100 wrote...

Do you know what would have been cool?

Me as Booker looking at Elizabeth and saying: Do it.

I mean SOMETHING that was at least more heartfelt than Elizabeth coldly drowning Booker, who was shocked by the sudden reveal.

She asks if killing Comstock, smothering him, is what he wants to do. The fact that he doesn't fight back is the realization and acceptance of what is happening.