Bioshock: Infinite Discussion *SPOILERS AHEAD*

[Assaultman67]

So to start off, if you ignored the title, I'm giving you one last chance ...

Turn Back Now!







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[Assaultman67]

I have so many questions ...

There are several points in the game where your choices will have repercussions. but two choices seemed to escape me as to what the consequences were.

There is a choice where you could pick a cage or a bird for a necklace. I picked the bird. Does this have any effect on the game?

Elizabeth talks at the very end about constants and variables. I was wondering if some of these choices have alternative endings and some don't do a damn thing.

Also, Origins of the songbird?

Also, how does killing one version of Booker DeWitt kill all version of Comstock?

I feel as if I need cliff notes to understand the game. (It's hard to fully comprehend the subtle meanings of the story while looting, shooting, flushing toilets, and running sinks.)

[akazi]

Must...Resist...Can't...Must See... No..Can't!

[droog]

I have so many questions ...

There are several points in the game where your choices will have repercussions. but two choices seemed to escape me as to what the consequences were.

There is a choice where you could pick a cage or a bird for a necklace. I picked the bird. Does this have any effect on the game?

Elizabeth talks at the very end about constants and variables. I was wondering if some of these choices have alternative endings and some don't do a damn thing.

Also, Origins of the songbird?

Also, how does killing one version of Booker DeWitt kill all version of Comstock?

I feel as if I need cliff notes to understand the game. (It's hard to fully comprehend the subtle meanings of the story while looting, shooting, flushing toilets, and running sinks.)

http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/28/under ... planation/

Here is a good interpretation.

"There are several points in the game where your choices will have repercussions. but two choices seemed to escape me as to what the consequences were."

The game want you to think, that when you decide for one choice you get another progress. On the end you see you can do what you want and you alway get the same ending.

[Renegade_Turner]

The bird and the cage thing is interesting to me too. I didn't understand the significance. I chose the bird, as I assume most people did, because I wanted Elizabeth to wear something that represents freedom, to go along with her progression from a caged animal to a free one. Very obvious implications with the pendants, no points here for an interesting reason for my choice. =P

However, I think it's odd that the bird and the cage at the beginning symbolise exactly what it is that's keeping her on Monument. The bird initially, when I first thought about it, represents something that is free. On the other hand, it was a giant mechanical bird which was keeping her caged. Interesting man-vs-beast role reversal there. lol

I didn't take much note of the choices I made in the game. I don't atually think they had an effect on the grand scheme of things. I chose to spare Slate initially, and then was genuinely horrified to come across him later on in the dank backrooms of the Good Time Club in a much worse manner than I'd left him. And so I gave him peace with a .45 in the head. That'll teach me for thinking I'm a good samaritan.

As to the songbird, I can't really explain that. But at the same time, they never really tell you how Columbia stays in perpetual flight either, unless I missed a voxaphone that went into detail about it. I think it's better that way. Safe to say that anything that seems difficult to explain, e.g. songbird, tears, vigors and Columbia itself can be explained away by simply pointing to the Lutece "siblings" and their creepy physicist brains.

I think the constants and variables reference was just their fatalist way of letting the audience know that nothing Booker DeWitt could do in trying to stop the cycle, without cutting it off at the root, would actually change the end results.

Also I'm gonna make a stab at the Booker DeWitt dying being the end of Comstock question.This perplexed me at first, and still confuses me now. My frail rationalisation of that is that by drowning the Booker DeWitt at the scene of the baptism, where he went after the battle of Wounded Knee, she puts a stop to both versions of Booker DeWitt. In one timeline, Booker is baptised and becomes Comstock. In the other timeline, he refuses baptism and remains in New York (I think), marries, has a child, loses his wife, yadda yadda yadda, cuts a deal to cover for his gambling debts (or whatever they are) and gives his daughter away.

So by killing off Booker DeWitt before he has a chance to become Comstock, the tear technology never gets messed with by Comstock and Anna never gets taken into another timeline. Now there's a hole in this that even I can see, although I'm not sure how much of a hole it is, but wouldn't there be loads of alternate Booker DeWitt's she'd have to drown? I mean the other ones that would become Comstock. But maybe drowning him before he has a chance to make the choice rights the cycle. Ow my head.

Another secondary theory. Remember when Elizabeth/Anna says to Booker at the end that she can see all the worlds, all the possibilities, all happening simultaneously, and with that can see every version of Booker/Comstock? Maybe that act was her in all the different timelines drowning all of the Booker's that would become Comstock? That's a lot of drowning though. D=

Also something they never explicitly say but do you think Anna's finger being cut off in Booker DeWitt's New York when he tries to go back on the deal is what caused her to have the strange powers she has? That'd basically be like an anomaly between timelines, a piece of her that exists in a separate timeline to herself. Rosalind Lutece says in a voxaphone right at the start of the game that the origin of Anna's powers "may have less to do with what she is, and more to do with what she is NOT". I came across in the second playthrough I've started otherwise it never would have popped into my head.

Well that's certainly enough for me, thank you for making me do this to myself. lol

[Freshbite]

First of all, watch this.

My frail rationalisation of that is that by drowning the Booker DeWitt at the scene of the baptism, where he went after the battle of Wounded Knee, put a stop to both versions of Booker DeWitt.

I took it as they actually went *back* in time to the point where he was baptised (or not). The question that follows is how that work, since he seems to have replaced the Booker in that point in time. (and he *have* to replace him in order for the paradox to occur, otherwise the Booker in that timeline will continue the cycle)

[+] SPOILER ALERT for another series called -Steins Gate-

Perhaps it works as it does in Steins Gate, that your current memory is replaced by the future's. But then it's arguable that Anna had no way of following him to that point in time since she wasn't born yet.

But the whole paradox theory collapses on itself when they showed the scene after the credits. There is just no way that could happen given what they have told us. The paradox whiped away all the Bookers, in all the timelines in order to erase Comstock. Booker ceased to exist at *that* point. Since Anna was born after the baptism, there's no way for the two of them to co-exist as they do in that scene.

I suggest two ways this could go, either A. The paradox did occur, all the Bookers were erased, and the after-credits scene is a lie, or B. The paradox managed to erase some Bookers, but we know that atleast one survived. Then some Bookers that would turn into Comstock could be alive aswell, which means that the cycle has not been altered in the slightest. The after-credits scene might be true, but Comstock would still appear in that timeline to take Anna away.

I take it as this game does not have a happy ending whatsoever. The happy ending is a lie.


Also, I watched these, and so should you all:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKKAkrnT_o8&hd=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XNJ5MmJRcI&hd=1

[droog]

This game is also pretty cool when you play it a second time. On first playthrough I dind't recognize many details. For example, when you look through these spyglasses (the first one) you see the Lutece Twins. When you exit the spy-mode they are gone.
I think there was also a statue which changes the character (I think from Lady Lutece to Comstocks wife).

[Freshbite]

I think there was also a statue which changes the character (I think from Lady Lutece to Comstocks wife).

No, it's from a male Lutece to the female Lutece. I noticed that it changed on my first run, but only from what on my second go.

I never noticed what you saw in the spyglasses though. I did use them on my first run, right after you get the telegram that says "Don't pick #77", but I never noticed the Luteces.

The bird and the cage thing is interesting to me too. I didn't understand the significance. I chose the bird, as I assume most people did, because I wanted Elizabeth to wear something that represents freedom, to go along with her progression from a caged animal to a free one. Very obvious implications with the pendants, no points here for an interesting reason for my choice. =P

I chose the Cage, probably in a sub-concious attempt to not do what they expect the gamer to do.

Also something they never explicitly say but do you think Anna's finger being cut off in Booker DeWitt's New York when he tries to go back on the deal is what caused her to have the strange powers she has?

It's atleast implied that's the cause.

[Renegade_Turner]

See this type of thing is one where I'm half on the side of "Yeah this makes sense." and half on the side of "How the fuck does that even work?" The second side would completely consume the first side if it wasn't for my nature as an imperfect mind. I feel like I'm constantly missing or forgetting something. So, when something seems to difficult to understand, my mind just accepts that IT (the something) must be true and my mind must be false. I think this is something that a lot of people do. A story seems so complex, even to the point of not making sense, that you blame yourself for not following the story rather than blaming the story for not following itself.

First of all, watch this.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I was after when I told people to wait until after the credits.

I chose the Cage, probably in a sub-concious attempt to not do what they expect the gamer to do.

Choices are a fabric of gaming that should be unique to each individual, but I don't think you should be making a choice based on what you think other people won't have done, or what the you think you're expected to do. Shouldn't you have honestly answered Elizabeth with which one you thought was nicer? I gave her an honest answer 'cause the bird was pretty and all that. YOU WERE UNFAITHFUL TO HER IN YOUR CHOICE. Also, NO OUT-OF-CHARACTER KNOWLEDGE. Pen and paper aficionados will know what I mean. Also, I just used the term "aficionados", please have me killed. Also please take most of what I just said in jest.

And it's actually "subconscious", just for future reference.

[Assaultman67]

See this type of thing is one where I'm half on the side of "Yeah this makes sense." and half on the side of "How the fuck does that even work?" The second side would completely consume the first side if it wasn't for my nature as an imperfect mind. I feel like I'm constantly missing or forgetting something. So, when something seems to difficult to understand, my mind just accepts that IT (the something) must be true and my mind must be false. I think this is something that a lot of people do. A story seems so complex, even to the point of not making sense, that you blame yourself for not following the story rather than blaming the story for not following itself.

Also where I'm at. Which is odd because I remember reading novels and stuff in literature classes and be able to understand it basically right after I read it.

But this game ... It just feels as if I'm missing something.

Honestly I don't know if it makes sense. The whole game builds off of the premise that the choices we make causes different universes to be "created". This suggests that all choices will lead you to a completely different path that is never reversible. However, I don't understand why a set of choices can't lead you to the same path a other set of choices would.

Such as, turning counterclockwise 270 degrees rather than clockwise 90 degrees. The same results are achieved.

Comstock is "killed" by killing the version of Booker Dewitt who searched out for salvation at that river. However, he has still gone through the suffering of war and still has unbearable burdens. What is there to say he couldn't have taken other paths to salvation and become a "Comstock" of a different form?

[Renegade_Turner]

That's a good point, although I think in this case the writers were asking for the readers to take a number of assumptions on if/then causalities and their consequences.

The prime one being that, if Booker DeWitt did seek salvation and an absolvence of his sins, it would then be as if he never committed them, but still finds them reproachful. I think this is why he (as Comstock) calls it the "sodom below". He sees America as man at his most wicked, which is why he builds Columbia towards the point of laying waste to the lands below. He sees that as his duty, as a way of payment for his sins against his fellow man at the battle of Wounded Knee, in some way. He just takes salvation in the most vile of ways.

The game is very fatalist in that way, but then deliberately contradicts this by allowing that fate to be altered. The term "fatalist" doesn't seem like it should belong to a man who made communicating with different worlds a possibility, but the male form of Lutece was apparently extremely fatalist. He always chose the same side of the coin because he believed, in that world, the coin HAD to fall on that side. When they do it at the start of the game it's the 27th time in a row he was right, and the female form of Lutece hadn't been right once. I think this might also imply that Booker DeWitt has tried this 26 other times, although I'm not sure.

[Freshbite]

Choices are a fabric of gaming that should be unique to each individual, but I don't think you should be making a choice based on what you think other people won't have done, or what the you think you're expected to do.

Well, I'm like that. I want to be surprised, but not because I'm doing what's expected of me.
I'm a complicated customer.

YOU WERE UNFAITHFUL TO HER IN YOUR CHOICE. Also, NO OUT-OF-CHARACTER KNOWLEDGE. Pen and paper aficionados will know what I mean.

im sowwy ;w;

But yeah, I find it a lot easier to take on the persona of your character when it's pen and paper rather than a pre-created character that's handed out to you. I'm not Booker DeWitt, I find myself in that, and I don't feel the necessity to pretend that I am.

And it's actually "subconscious", just for future reference.

Thanks, I was trying to figure that one out...

Such as, turning counterclockwise 270 degrees rather than clockwise 90 degrees. The same results are achieved.

Not necessarily, turning 270° naturally takes longer time and the motion you create is not the same, which may in turn affect something else. A Butterfly effect might kick in.

He always chose the same side of the coin because he believed, in that world, the coin HAD to fall on that side. When they do it at the start of the game it's the 27th time in a row he was right, and the female form of Lutece hadn't been right once. I think this might also imply that Booker DeWitt has tried this 26 other times, although I'm not sure.

I thought this was clear? I believe it was also explained in one of the videos I linked to.

[Assaultman67]

Such as, turning counterclockwise 270 degrees rather than clockwise 90 degrees. The same results are achieved.

Not necessarily, turning 270° naturally takes longer time and the motion you create is not the same, which may in turn affect something else. A Butterfly effect might kick in.

True, but we're not worried about the butterfly effect, we're worried about booker dewitt becoming comstock.

All the other little events that happen don't matter.

The fact is booker dewitt has the potential to become comstock and even has the desire to become comstock (obtain salvation) so preventing all comstocks from ever existing surely wouldn't be as easy as killing some guy at a river.

[Freshbite]

I agree, it wouldn't.

[Renegade_Turner]

im sowwy ;w;

But yeah, I find it a lot easier to take on the persona of your character when it's pen and paper rather than a pre-created character that's handed out to you. I'm not Booker DeWitt, I find myself in that, and I don't feel the necessity to pretend that I am.

The rule still stands! =P

You do have a point, but I always take it that when I'm making any decisions in game I'm making them as that character in that world.

I thought this was clear? I believe it was also explained in one of the videos I linked to.

Was it clear? Also I tried to watch those videos, but the dude talking in them really bothered me so I couldn't watch them. It wasn't clear to me. Also, just because some guy on Youtube said it doesn't make it an absolute.