I finished the game approximately three hours ago and... Yeah, my mind is still thinking over it. It took me a while to process it all. Actually, I'm still processing it. This thread and other discussions of it across the internet have helped. It was downer ending and I wish Elizabeth weren't so darn morbid throughout the ending sequence. Heck, I think it would have been better if Booker and Liz had just gone to Paris and lived out their lives!
Still, it was a great game. Definitely a contender for GOTY, despite some its flaws.
Bioshock Infinite - Ending Discussion Thread
Débuté par
OdanUrr
, mars 27 2013 04:22
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#152
Posté 12 avril 2013 - 08:10
Isichar
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Capt. Obvious wrote...
I finished the game approximately three hours ago and... Yeah, my mind is still thinking over it. It took me a while to process it all. Actually, I'm still processing it. This thread and other discussions of it across the internet have helped. It was downer ending and I wish Elizabeth weren't so darn morbid throughout the ending sequence. Heck, I think it would have been better if Booker and Liz had just gone to Paris and lived out their lives!
Still, it was a great game. Definitely a contender for GOTY, despite some its flaws.
The ending was happier imo then it would have been had they just gone to Paris. You know Comstock exists in "a million million different worlds" and you have even experienced first hand a one in which Elizabeth was tortured into becoming Comstocks puppet. Could you really just willingly ignore all that when you had the ability to remove all of it altogether?
As a result we are left with a timeline in which Elizabeth can finally be raised by a real father without a Comstock screwing everything up (Paris can come later).
#153
Posté 12 avril 2013 - 11:25
OdanUrr
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Isichar wrote...
The ending was happier imo then it would have been had they just gone to Paris. You know Comstock exists in "a million million different worlds" and you have even experienced first hand a one in which Elizabeth was tortured into becoming Comstocks puppet. Could you really just willingly ignore all that when you had the ability to remove all of it altogether?
Yes.
Ask yourself this question, if you had the ability to manipulate time, would you go back and change every event that has brought pain and suffering to humanity? And if you did that, what would the future be like today? Because in doing so you would have changed the lives of billions of people, some for the better, some for the worse. Do you have the right to alter the lives of billions of people just because you think you're doing the right thing? BioShock Infinite never ponders this question, it conveniently sidelines it for the sake of its narrative, but the issue remains.
There's also another issue. In one of The New Jedi Order books, Mara's training Anakin Solo in the ways of the Force on Dantooine. She poses a problem to him about a village that is in danger of being flooded and asks him how he would solve the problem. Anakin promptly replies he'd use the Force to save the village. Mara counters that if he did that, he'd never solve the problem, because the village would remain in that area and the danger would always exist. The real problem was that the villagers should never have built their village on that plot of land in the first place. The bottom line was that sometimes people need to solve problems on their own rather than having someone solve them for them. People need to learn from their mistakes. So, by removing the universes from existence, you're also removing the possibility that the people of Columbia will find a solution to their problems.
Remember, with great power comes great responsibility. Sometimes the wisest course of action is not to use said power.
Modifié par OdanUrr, 12 avril 2013 - 11:27 .
#154
Posté 14 avril 2013 - 09:42
Gatt9
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Sidney wrote...
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.
Actually, she doesn't choose non-existence.
As others have stated, the basis is the many worlds theory, so at the point of the baptism, that creates two separate universes which then go on to fork infinitely, because each decision forks off another n universes where n is the number of options.
So they go back to the point of the baptism, where the number of universes is n/2, and remove booker/Comstock from there.
But that doesn't actually remove Elizabeth from the timeline, because there was an earlier fork. Where booker made the decision to go to the baptism. We still have the universe where he didn't go.
The problem becomes, in that universe, there's going to be another fork, one where he changes his mind at a later date. So we really have Terminator 3 here, they delayed the event, but they didn't stop it. To stop the event, they need to do Butterfly Effect, and remove Booker from the womb.
Which gives us a whole new problem, because at that point there's infinitely many baby bookers, so you can't eliminate him from all of them.
In short, by the rules the ending uses, all they did was eliminate a small subsection of the universes that have Booker/Comstock in them. Elizabeth still exists in many universes as does Booker.
So that may be the most ingenius sequel fodder I've seen since Butterfly Effect and 12 monkeys.
#155
Posté 14 avril 2013 - 10:50
M Hedonist
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Warning - I'm talking about the movie Donnie Darko in following post. I wouldn't say I'm really giving spoilers away since I don't talk about anything that actually happens in the movie, but rather an explanation for what happened - most of which is information given outside the actual film. You should still be able to fully enjoy Donnie Darko. It's a movie that mainly lives through really great, well-executed scenes, it just also happens to have a bizarro time-travel plot similar to Bioshock Infinite.
Basically, the plot of Bioshock Infinite is Donnie Darko - if you've seen that movie (and know what it's really about), Bioshock Infinite is much easier to understand. Both are, essentially, about undoing an error in time-and-space. In Donnie Darko, it just happens randomly, in Infinite, it's caused by the physicists sending Booker's girl into the future. In Donnie Darko, the error would simply destroy everything in existence unless it is undone, in Infinite, the error would get New York destroyed (and probably cause a lot of other bad things). So the physicists use Booker to get the girl back where she should be. Or they wanted Booker to destroy the syphon so Elizabeth could undo Comstock - both work.
And, after all is said and done - after the credits - you get a small cutscene of Booker in his apartment, with his baby girl (implied to be) where she should be. Just like in Donnie Darko, it ends with the main character being where it all started - only that in Donnie Darko, it's much more grim...
So - why did I enjoy watching Donnie Darko, but hate playing Infinite? Infinite's even much better-made, in terms of quality. I think the reason is mainly that I watched Donnie Darko, but I played Infinite - a bizarro interdimensional-travel plot is fine by me for a 2-hour film, but when it goes on for several hours and the game requires me to actively engage in the plot (without having any say in it), it was a jarring experience. It all started to go downhill for me once we go through the first tear. Everything I do after that felt meaningless to me, up until a specific point. I just started to view everything from the perspective that we're just experiencing one of many parallel universes. What's the point in killing bad guys when they're still alive in a potentially infinite amount of other universes. The plot becomes about stumbling through beautiful sceneries, trying to find the next tear.
I also didn't quite get the logic of going through tears. I had assumed that it's a door into another universe. But apparently they aren't. Or they are, but Elizabeth moves every single person in the current universe into the other, but everyone becomes what they are in the other universe, only that they don't really, and Booker doesn't do that at all - anyway, the point is, I don't get the constant lines Elizabeth gives about us causing the bloody revolution. From my initial understanding, we just randomly stumbled into this universe and all that would happen in that universe, anyway. And that we could just go back if we wanted to. Or at least we could simply go back to the tear to undo all that. Couldn't we?
All in all, that was just unnecessarily complicating, when the plot could've been straightforward and emotional. If we actually got Chen Lin to make the weapons for the revolution, I may have actually felt remorse and understood Elizabeth. The only thing I did feel was irritation.
"Maybe we didn't think this through." - Booker (or something along those lines) upon finding the tools
- My thoughts: "You think?"
So that was the game's low for me. The part after shooting the ghost dead enough times was superb, definitely the best part of the game. The dystopian future where we slowly figured out what had happened - this is time travel done right. I loved everything, the winter atmosphere, the boys of silence, Elizabeth getting tortured - it was all emotional. It reminded me that I'm a human being and that I can feel emotions, so that was nice. Up until the end, which just didn't feel satisfying to me at all.
So, back to the ending: I wasn't entirely sure why it didn't satisfy me. It certainly didn't confuse me.
Surprisingly, the enlightenment came through Dunkey - freaking Dunkey. Sorry, wrong video - he really talks about Infinite in this one. He's funny because he's nonsensical, essentially.
But, when he imitated Elizabeth in a stupid manner and compared it to the 'architect' scene from the Matrix, I got it - the ending is freaking pretentious. Donnie Darko doesn't give you a lengthy description of the rules the universe works by in the film itself, at least not in the theatrical cut. That stuff is still out there, the director wrote it all down somewhere, but the film itself lets you make your own interpretation. Everything in the movie also works if you just think of it all as the delusions of a schizophrenic young man. Infinite on the other hand forces its stupid time travel onto you. The fact that everything we did had no effect in the end whatsoever and all that is now undone didn't help, either.
My conclusion: Donnie Darko doesn't abandon its emotional core until the last minutes of the movie. Infinite does so the first time you go through a tear. Donnie Darko lets you make your own interpretation. Infinite doesn't.
But then again, apparently I am the only person in the world who both understands the plot of Infinite (and without reading any forum post or anything, too) and hates the plot at the same time. So I guess there must be something wrong with me, not the game.
Phew. That's a load off my mind. Probably the longest post I've written on BSN yet.
Basically, the plot of Bioshock Infinite is Donnie Darko - if you've seen that movie (and know what it's really about), Bioshock Infinite is much easier to understand. Both are, essentially, about undoing an error in time-and-space. In Donnie Darko, it just happens randomly, in Infinite, it's caused by the physicists sending Booker's girl into the future. In Donnie Darko, the error would simply destroy everything in existence unless it is undone, in Infinite, the error would get New York destroyed (and probably cause a lot of other bad things). So the physicists use Booker to get the girl back where she should be. Or they wanted Booker to destroy the syphon so Elizabeth could undo Comstock - both work.
And, after all is said and done - after the credits - you get a small cutscene of Booker in his apartment, with his baby girl (implied to be) where she should be. Just like in Donnie Darko, it ends with the main character being where it all started - only that in Donnie Darko, it's much more grim...
So - why did I enjoy watching Donnie Darko, but hate playing Infinite? Infinite's even much better-made, in terms of quality. I think the reason is mainly that I watched Donnie Darko, but I played Infinite - a bizarro interdimensional-travel plot is fine by me for a 2-hour film, but when it goes on for several hours and the game requires me to actively engage in the plot (without having any say in it), it was a jarring experience. It all started to go downhill for me once we go through the first tear. Everything I do after that felt meaningless to me, up until a specific point. I just started to view everything from the perspective that we're just experiencing one of many parallel universes. What's the point in killing bad guys when they're still alive in a potentially infinite amount of other universes. The plot becomes about stumbling through beautiful sceneries, trying to find the next tear.
I also didn't quite get the logic of going through tears. I had assumed that it's a door into another universe. But apparently they aren't. Or they are, but Elizabeth moves every single person in the current universe into the other, but everyone becomes what they are in the other universe, only that they don't really, and Booker doesn't do that at all - anyway, the point is, I don't get the constant lines Elizabeth gives about us causing the bloody revolution. From my initial understanding, we just randomly stumbled into this universe and all that would happen in that universe, anyway. And that we could just go back if we wanted to. Or at least we could simply go back to the tear to undo all that. Couldn't we?
All in all, that was just unnecessarily complicating, when the plot could've been straightforward and emotional. If we actually got Chen Lin to make the weapons for the revolution, I may have actually felt remorse and understood Elizabeth. The only thing I did feel was irritation.
"Maybe we didn't think this through." - Booker (or something along those lines) upon finding the tools
- My thoughts: "You think?"
So that was the game's low for me. The part after shooting the ghost dead enough times was superb, definitely the best part of the game. The dystopian future where we slowly figured out what had happened - this is time travel done right. I loved everything, the winter atmosphere, the boys of silence, Elizabeth getting tortured - it was all emotional. It reminded me that I'm a human being and that I can feel emotions, so that was nice. Up until the end, which just didn't feel satisfying to me at all.
So, back to the ending: I wasn't entirely sure why it didn't satisfy me. It certainly didn't confuse me.
Surprisingly, the enlightenment came through Dunkey - freaking Dunkey. Sorry, wrong video - he really talks about Infinite in this one. He's funny because he's nonsensical, essentially.
But, when he imitated Elizabeth in a stupid manner and compared it to the 'architect' scene from the Matrix, I got it - the ending is freaking pretentious. Donnie Darko doesn't give you a lengthy description of the rules the universe works by in the film itself, at least not in the theatrical cut. That stuff is still out there, the director wrote it all down somewhere, but the film itself lets you make your own interpretation. Everything in the movie also works if you just think of it all as the delusions of a schizophrenic young man. Infinite on the other hand forces its stupid time travel onto you. The fact that everything we did had no effect in the end whatsoever and all that is now undone didn't help, either.
My conclusion: Donnie Darko doesn't abandon its emotional core until the last minutes of the movie. Infinite does so the first time you go through a tear. Donnie Darko lets you make your own interpretation. Infinite doesn't.
But then again, apparently I am the only person in the world who both understands the plot of Infinite (and without reading any forum post or anything, too) and hates the plot at the same time. So I guess there must be something wrong with me, not the game.
Phew. That's a load off my mind. Probably the longest post I've written on BSN yet.
Modifié par Sauruz, 14 avril 2013 - 11:33 .
#156
Posté 15 avril 2013 - 05:49
Isichar
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OdanUrr wrote...
Isichar wrote...
The ending was happier imo then it would have been had they just gone to Paris. You know Comstock exists in "a million million different worlds" and you have even experienced first hand a one in which Elizabeth was tortured into becoming Comstocks puppet. Could you really just willingly ignore all that when you had the ability to remove all of it altogether?
Yes.
Ask yourself this question, if you had the ability to manipulate time, would you go back and change every event that has brought pain and suffering to humanity? And if you did that, what would the future be like today? Because in doing so you would have changed the lives of billions of people, some for the better, some for the worse. Do you have the right to alter the lives of billions of people just because you think you're doing the right thing? BioShock Infinite never ponders this question, it conveniently sidelines it for the sake of its narrative, but the issue remains.
There's also another issue. In one of The New Jedi Order books, Mara's training Anakin Solo in the ways of the Force on Dantooine. She poses a problem to him about a village that is in danger of being flooded and asks him how he would solve the problem. Anakin promptly replies he'd use the Force to save the village. Mara counters that if he did that, he'd never solve the problem, because the village would remain in that area and the danger would always exist. The real problem was that the villagers should never have built their village on that plot of land in the first place. The bottom line was that sometimes people need to solve problems on their own rather than having someone solve them for them. People need to learn from their mistakes. So, by removing the universes from existence, you're also removing the possibility that the people of Columbia will find a solution to their problems.
Remember, with great power comes great responsibility. Sometimes the wisest course of action is not to use said power.
Heres the problem. Everything your saying we shouldnt do, has already happened. These are powers that were already used, and as a result has caused the events of Bioshock. And Booker helped cause all of that. And until it never happened the multiverse or w/e will remain essentially broken. As long as 1 Comstock exists it will remain broken, does not matter if its 1 or a million Comstocks, he cant exist, and the entire story of Infinite is spent showing you why.
If you think ignoring that is the best solution then I cant help but feel you missed pretty much the entire point of the game. Your not trying to fix a problem that would have existed regardless, your fixing a problem you helped cause that should not have happened in the first place, and its a problem that ends up causing nothing but suffering for literally everyone involved and effecting worlds it should not have to begin with.
The key difference between the star wars example and this is that Anakin is not to fault for the flood occuring, Mara is teaching him to look at the result of his actions on a deeper level and ask how much is he really helping in the long run. But that entire situation would change if the flood only happened because Anakin caused it in the first place.
With great power comes great responsibility yes, but to use said power which causes untold suffering, and to turn around and claim that you no longer have any resposibility towards the results just seems ignorant to me.
Modifié par Isichar, 15 avril 2013 - 06:07 .
#157
Posté 22 avril 2013 - 06:47
Conestoga Joe
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After reading through the FAQ thread on NeoGAF, I still have a few questions. Anyone care to take a crack at them?
1) Robert Lutece comes from the universe that “our” Booker is originally from, and Rosalind Lutece comes from a universe where Booker was baptized and became Comstock. But what about the Luteces from all the other universes? If the Luteces being betrayed by Comstock and scattered across the possibility space happens in every universe, meaning that the Luteces who recruit Booker are actually the combined forms of every Lutece from every different universe, shouldn’t there be only one Lutece, since Robert and Rosalind are just alternate universe versions of each other?
2) When Elizabeth is captured by Songbird just before entering Comstock House, Booker and Elizabeth have already traveled through multiple tears into different universes. Meaning that the universe the game ends in is not the same universe our Booker originally rescued his Elizabeth from. So where is the Elizabeth from this universe? Why isn’t Comstock performing the operation on her instead of on ours? Why does the Songbird from this universe have the same crack in his eye that the Songbird from the original universe got by chasing Booker into Battleship Bay?
3) Elizabeth’s pendant vanishes in the final scene where Booker is drowned, and Booker seems to this that this Elizabeth isn’t the same one he’s been traveling with throughout the game. Is this just another alternate Elizabeth, and if so, why wasn’t “our” Elizabeth present at the drowning? If it is our Elizabeth, why is her pendant gone and why does Booker ask who she is?
4) When Elizabeth is showing Booker the infinite lighthouses at the end, they see another version of themselves doing the same thing. If any number of Elizabeths were able to destroy the siphon and become semi-omnipotent, what’s the significance? Isn’t the point of the story that “our” Booker was the one who finally broke the cycle? I’ve heard people say it’s supposed to represent the ways other people played the game, but that doesn’t really work in the game world because every player gets the same number of checkmarks on the blackboard at the beginning.
1) Robert Lutece comes from the universe that “our” Booker is originally from, and Rosalind Lutece comes from a universe where Booker was baptized and became Comstock. But what about the Luteces from all the other universes? If the Luteces being betrayed by Comstock and scattered across the possibility space happens in every universe, meaning that the Luteces who recruit Booker are actually the combined forms of every Lutece from every different universe, shouldn’t there be only one Lutece, since Robert and Rosalind are just alternate universe versions of each other?
2) When Elizabeth is captured by Songbird just before entering Comstock House, Booker and Elizabeth have already traveled through multiple tears into different universes. Meaning that the universe the game ends in is not the same universe our Booker originally rescued his Elizabeth from. So where is the Elizabeth from this universe? Why isn’t Comstock performing the operation on her instead of on ours? Why does the Songbird from this universe have the same crack in his eye that the Songbird from the original universe got by chasing Booker into Battleship Bay?
3) Elizabeth’s pendant vanishes in the final scene where Booker is drowned, and Booker seems to this that this Elizabeth isn’t the same one he’s been traveling with throughout the game. Is this just another alternate Elizabeth, and if so, why wasn’t “our” Elizabeth present at the drowning? If it is our Elizabeth, why is her pendant gone and why does Booker ask who she is?
4) When Elizabeth is showing Booker the infinite lighthouses at the end, they see another version of themselves doing the same thing. If any number of Elizabeths were able to destroy the siphon and become semi-omnipotent, what’s the significance? Isn’t the point of the story that “our” Booker was the one who finally broke the cycle? I’ve heard people say it’s supposed to represent the ways other people played the game, but that doesn’t really work in the game world because every player gets the same number of checkmarks on the blackboard at the beginning.
#158
Posté 22 avril 2013 - 09:12
BouncyFrag
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I noticed something during the brief visit to Rapture. If I remember correctly, only Ryan or his relations could activate and use the bathyspheres which is exactly what Elizabeth has you do. Is this just an obscure bit of lore that I'm over thinking or is there something more significant in that Booker can use the mini-subs?
On a side note, I thought it would have been funny if Elizabeth had said "would you kindly activate the bathysphere" and would start giggling when Booker followed her request. Booker would be like "whats so funny?" and she'd be all like "oh nothing, nothing at all *under her breath* I controls you now muwahahaha!"
On a side note, I thought it would have been funny if Elizabeth had said "would you kindly activate the bathysphere" and would start giggling when Booker followed her request. Booker would be like "whats so funny?" and she'd be all like "oh nothing, nothing at all *under her breath* I controls you now muwahahaha!"
Modifié par BouncyFrag, 22 avril 2013 - 09:13 .
#159
Posté 22 avril 2013 - 12:36
OdanUrr
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BouncyFrag wrote...
I noticed something during the brief visit to Rapture. If I remember correctly, only Ryan or his relations could activate and use the bathyspheres which is exactly what Elizabeth has you do. Is this just an obscure bit of lore that I'm over thinking or is there something more significant in that Booker can use the mini-subs?
If memory serves, the bathyspheres could be activated, not only by Ryan himself, but by all authorized members of Rapture's "higher echelons." However, the genetic key wasn't exactly foolproof and could be fooled by any relatives of anyone authorized to use the bathysphere.
