Bioshock Infinite Asking to Play Over Again

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This post contains spoilers for BioShock Infinite.

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Developer Irrational Games' commencement-person action title BioShock Infinite (available for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC) has been out for a couple of months now, but forums and message boards are still full of gamers' unanswered questions about the surprisingly esoteric game. It doesn't help much that you detect many of the answers in easily missed audio logs scattered throughout the levels, only, hey, that'south what the Internet is for.

Here, more than or less, are the answers to your lingering questions.

Why is a Beach Boys song playing in 1912?

OK, some of you are currently screaming at your computers, phones, or tablets. Two points: First, you're correct; this is a actually easy question and one of the few that players can answer even without finding all the Voxophones. Second, please stop screaming. You're on a bus, and you're scaring people.

But I bring upward the floating city'southward seemingly incongruous soundtrack — which consists of sometime-timey versions of songs from Cyndi Lauper, Creedence Clearwater Revival, R.East.M., and others — considering its genesis ties in with some other topic I'll cover later.

Columbia has a bunch of unstable "tears" that occasionally burst open to allow a glimpse into some other time and identify, like a world where Episode Half-dozen of the Star Wars saga kept its original championship of "Revenge of the Jedi." Sometimes when players find one of these rip-holes, they tin can hear music on the other side.

Albert Fink, Columbia's resident composer and brother of pathological industrialist Jeremiah Fink, has besides heard the songs coming through the interdimensional portal conveniently located in his studio. Because "profiting from the piece of work of others" is apparently emblazoned on the Fink family unit crest, Albert took the opportunity to create his masterpieces by adapting the tunes he heard into more than 1910-friendly versions. So we get a barbershop quartet singing The Beach Boys' "God Only Knows" and a rendition of Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" that sounds straight out of Al Jolson's catalog.

In case you missed the pertinent Voxophones, here they are:

"Irresolute My Tune"

"Out of the Thin Air"

Which leads logically to:

What the hell is the Songbird?

Irrational has always been reluctant to hash out the giant mechanical bird that acts as Elizabeth's protector. Before the developer appear Songbird's official proper noun, it would only refer to it every bit "Him." Information technology's unclear whether that was to keep some mystique or whether Irrational just hadn't properly named the thing yet. Just the Songbird featured prominently in the game's marketing, and fans couldn't wait to figure out exactly what it was.

And and then we played the game, and it was withal murky.

Irrational purposefully obscures the nature of the beast, restricting our knowledge to general facts:

• It is very big and strong.
• Information technology is mechanical with some organic characteristics.
• Its purpose is to keep Elizabeth from leaving Columbia, and it has thwarted Booker's attempts to relieve her several times.
• That's information technology.

And really, that'southward all we need to know. But that isn't to say that nosotros tin't still glean some data about Songbird from those pesky Voxophones. Accept this one, for example:

"A Child Needs a Protector"

Your first time through, Fink'southward clarification of an incredible pattern he spied through a tear may not strike you as significant, but ane scene most the finish puts information technology into a new perspective.

If you can get by the maker of that video'southward almost consummate refusal to look anywhere that will help me make my bespeak, you might observe something in the background of that death scene. Do you see it? Back there in the tube?

Since this scene takes place in the outset BioShock's underwater city of Rapture, it isn't suprising to encounter a Large Daddy. Simply watch that video again: The Large Daddy is dead, and his Little Sister is mourning him. In the foreground, Songbird is dead, and Elizabeth — the girl he protects — is mourning him. I can too get crazy obsessive and point out how Elizabeth'south blue dress resembles a Trivial Sister'due south and how the color-coded awareness indicators in Songbird's optics match the ones in a Big Daddy.

It is not subtle.

But while you're replaying things I've already shown yous, go listen to that Voxophone again. Which plans do you retrieve Fink had spied through the tear?

While we're on this topic, look at Infinite'south vigors — genetic superpowers that resemble the earlier games' plasmids. Fink stole those from tears, too, merely skillful on him for finding a way to brand them drinkable instead of requiring Booker to jab himself with a needle large enough to blind a tarsier.

What happened at the end?

Do a Google search for "BioShock Infinite ending," and yous'll find pages upon pages of interpretations, theories, and all-out crazy guesses. We even accept an incredibly pop mail service here on GamesBeat from community writer Michael Kyle in which he offers his own meticulously organized thoughts on what exactly happens. Here's the short version of the ending: Booker discovers that he and Comstock are the same person from different universes, so this happens.

Then Booker drowns at the stop. But how does that fix anything?

Another refresher: BioShock Infinite subscribes to the "many-worlds interpretation" of quantum mechanics. Oversimply put, every conclusion anyone makes anywhere creates a new universe, and equally many universes as outcomes exist. And so in some realities, Plane!is a way shorter motion-picture show because one or more members of the flying crew picked the chicken over the fish.

Net discussions, like this one at IGN, are full of people presenting their cases, but ii full general interpretations stand out.

The hopeful catastrophe

This theory, which is the one that Mr. Kyle'south article endorses, says that the various Elizabeths and Annas drown Booker after he decides to accept the baptism but before he actually goes through with it
. Then Booker never becomes Comstock, which means that Columbia never exists and the events of the game never happen. Meanwhile, the branch containing the relatively good Booker continues on.

The post-credits scene — in which Booker goes to Anna's nursery to run into if she's there — supports this reading because with no Comstock, DeWitt and his daughter aren't separated. This analysis points out that the agenda on Booker'south desk shows the date that he originally turned Anna over to Robert Lutece. In this estimation, then, the universe — now free of Comstock'south meddling — has reset to the moment at which the cross-dimensional harm occurred.

This theory does have a possible issue, though: the many-worlds estimation may non work that manner. This leads to:

The bleak ending

In this reading, every conclusion Booker has made his entire life has split the universe, culminating (for our purposes) in a single instance where Booker was or was not baptized afterwards the atrocities he committed at Wounded Articulatio genus. Other Booker DeWitts exist, but some might accept decided to make handcrafted furniture instead of joining the Army. Maybe some died when they were children. Some might have fifty-fifty been women with totally unlike lives. Rosalind and Robert Lutece are differently gendered versions of the same person, so maybe some Betty DeWitts also exist somewhere.

From this deject of Bookers (and, perhaps, Bettys), one emerges: the Booker who has fabricated all the choices that atomic number 82 to this particular moment. This theory says that resolving the DeWitt/Comstock disharmonize hinges upon only i Booker ever being in a position to decide whether to take the baptism. Here's why:

From that decision, infinite new worlds emerge. Perchance a globe exists in which Booker doesn't accept upward gambling. Possibly in another 1, Comstock wears a funny chapeau, and nobody knows why. But considering the existences of the Booker-with-money-verse and the funny-lid-verse depend entirely on DeWitt's original option in that river, they will both cease to exist if he never makes that selection.

The only manner to keep Comstock from building Columbia as a flying fortress of fiery death-hate is to keep him from always existing in the first place. The only way to exercise that is to kill Booker — the one Booker who reaches that point in the river —before he decides either fashion. The dour-enders say that it's just not possible to trim offending twigs from the multiverse; you have to cut off the entire branch.

Merely what about that post-credits scene?

That little bonus bit, which features a decidedly undrowned Booker, is the bleak ending'due south biggest hurdle. Because Anna/Elizabeth was born subsequently the baptism, how tin can she exist here?

One possibility, described in that same IGN discussion mentioned above, is that Booker'southward death creates a granddaddy paradox (if yous go dorsum in time and kill your granddaddy before he marries your grandmother, you'll prevent your own nascency, which ways that y'all tin't travel back in time to kill your grandfather). Considering a paradox is the sort of thing that could destroy the entire space-time continuum — co-ordinate to Back to the Futurity's Emmett Dark-brown, anyway — nature prefers to sort them out. In this example, the theory says:

[T]he choice to accept the baptism creates a paradox, meaning it is non a possibility. This means that the merely possibility immune by nature is to refuse the baptism, making the refusal no longer a variable simply a constant. Thanks to Elizabeth, no branching universes are created at this point, and Booker goes on to raise Anna without her being taken away by an alternate version of himself.

A slightly less complicated version is that the last scene depicts a Booker who decided not to even get to the river for the baptism but whose life otherwise perfectly mirrors that of the Booker we had controlled during the game. But I'thousand not sure how satisfying that theory is.

Now that we all take headaches, let'southward try something easier.

Why does DeWitt become Comstock?

When I asked the GamesBeat staff for their questions about Space, this one came back again and over again. Why would DeWitt, who turns to Christianity to endeavor to escape the atrocities he committed at Wounded Genu, become Comstock, who plans even greater atrocities?

The Natural Asshole Theory

Since my coworkers had null, I attempted to outsource a solution, preferably from someone smarter than I am. I wanted to talk to someone familiar with the technical aspects of drama and character, so I reached out to Cassandra Silverish, a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto's Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies to see what she could come up with.

She came upwardly with a lot, simply here's a sample.

[C]onsider a few things well-nigh Booker in the universe in which he refuses baptism. Retrieve about the exchange that Booker has with Elizabeth shortly afterwards she kills Daisy. Elizabeth asks Booker how he gets over killing people. He tells her that he doesn't, that he just learns to alive with the knowledge of what he's done. He seems to suggest that she shouldn't carp with regret or remorse, that she should only put her activeness behind her and move forward. He suggests that he knows himself as a human who is capable of murder and indeed as a person who has killed. He self-identifies as a killer.

Relatedly, consider the ease of Booker'due south violence. Of course, options are necessarily delimited by the game construction, but from the starting time he is violently ambitious. At the fair, when he "wins" the raffle, his two choices are to throw the ball at the couple or at the hawker. There is no 3rd button to walk away. (I recognize that this isn't a sandbox and that the game needs an active choice to push the story forward, merely the fact that his merely options are aggressive is indicative of something significant virtually his grapheme.)

[Edit: A commenter points out, correctly, that one can choose non to throw the ball at either party by letting the decision timer elapse. Immediately afterward, notwithstanding, the game removes player control so Booker can graphically shove one guard's confront into another's Skyhook regardless of the previous conclusion, so the game is notwithstanding painting him as violently aggressive in this scene.]

Spring to the cease of the narrative, and we see Booker, seething with anger, brutally beat and then drown Comstock. Violence is his primary action from beginning to end. Based on this, I would suggest that Booker'southward fundamental nature is aggressive and fifty-fifty violent, and that this is consequently truthful of Comstock as well.

And so, in Columbia, he cobbles together the bits of ideology that allow him to justify his megalomania and wrest complete control from those who find comfort in accented leadership. In this estimation, he never regretted his actions at Wounded Knee; he just didn't have a good reason for them. He didn't have the right story to fit his experience. We see his continued tendency toward violence inside of Columbia made manifest in the spectacle of the public chirapsia
of the mixed-race couple and in the exhibits in the Hall of Heroes.

Comstock has recuperated his violence to command his population. Information technology isn't a surprise, then, that in an alternate futurity Comstock would want to send his flight metropolis to destroy New York. He never had a problem with violence or with totalitarianism, and the story that he weaves to assistance explain his deportment allows for one group of people to dominate another in the service of a "greater good."

So basically, Booker is a vehement jackass no affair what he calls himself.

The Monopoly Theory

Shamus Young wrote an interesting cavalcade at The Escapist in which he offers the following possibility:

[Comstock] seems to have a twisted view of both baptism and his faith. Instead of repenting of his evil, he acts similar baptism is some kind of "go out of guilt for free menu." Instead of feeling remorse at his crimes, he celebrates them and uses them to build his persona every bit a heroic figure. [. . .] At some point Comstock gets the idea to baptize the earth in burn. Baptism worked so well for him, and so he figures it volition be good for the human race in a "doomsday that kills all unbelievers" kind of fashion.

Immature supposes that rather than helping him justify his crimes, Comstock's baptism frees his mind to focus on his next big projection: himself. His new identity garners him a congregation — later worshippers — who bloat his sense of cocky-worth. And if you dangle a floating warship-city in front of a guy similar that, he'south guaranteed to exercise increasingly self-aggrandizing things with it.

"Another Ark for Some other Time"

Who was that guy in the chair?

When DeWitt first arrives at the lighthouse that serves as the entry point to Columbia, he finds a tortured and bloody corpse with an ominous note ("Don't disappoint the states") pinned to it. We might presume at this point that the torso serves as a warning to DeWitt from his shadowy employers: succeed, or this will happen to you.

But once you've finished the game, that corpse makes no sense. DeWitt has no "shadowy employers"; he'south going to Columbia to wrap up the Luteces' unfinished business.

And so who the hell is that guy?

A previous Booker

One forum poster has an interesting theory about the corpse's identity: he is one of the 122 previous Bookers that the Luteces sent to save Elizabeth. He failed to do and then, and the quantum twins left his torso in the lighthouse as a warning to his successors.

I'm including this more than equally a fun guess than a particularly convincing i. For starters, the corpse wears the clothes of the Fink workers you fight later in the game and non what I presume would be the threadbare once-suit of a drunken, washed-up individual detective. Nor does his manus bear the "A.D." marker that Booker's does. Information technology's too unclear whether the Luteces are actually using different Bookers from unlike universes or the same one, over and over. The latter seems far more than probable; information technology makes the most sense that they requite the same DeWitt who sold his child the take a chance to reclaim her. And Rosalind Lutece says as much on i of the Voxaphones:

"An Ultimatum"

So it's probably not another Booker, only I do like the possibility.

A false memory

Earlier the game begins, nosotros come across a quotation from a book called "Barriers to Trans-Dimensional Travel" by R. Lutece (either Robert or Rosalind): "The mind of the subject will desperately struggle to create memories where none be. …"

This idea is key to the plot, contributing to Booker's amnesia and allowing the three or 4 giant revelations at the end of the game come every bit behemothic surprises to him when they otherwise wouldn't. A poster in the same thread (linked to in the previous department) suspects that the man in the chair isn't at that place at all just is instead a projection of DeWitt'south newly established identity as a gun-for-rent working for mysterious and sinister forces. I thing about mysterious and sinister forces: they beloved torturing and murdering people. And if they tin go out a chilling note on them for the adjacent person who walks by, that's like Christmas plus their birthday.

Co-ordinate to the theory, Booker knows this, so he imagines this scary corpse into beingness. It doesn't otherwise exist.

The lighthouse keeper

The nigh realistic possibility, withal, is that the corpse is but that of the man charged with guarding the lighthouse confronting Booker'southward incursion. A note on the map in the previous room (at right) says, "Be prepared. He'due south on his way. You must stop him. -C."

That notation comes from Comstock and instructs the baby-sit to stop Booker from reaching Columbia. The next logical question then is, how did he finish upwards and then tortured and expressionless?

Afterwards in the game, you lot get to the Lutece home and observe a film of the lighthouse with the note "only one obstacle." That "i obstacle" has two parts: the code necessary to summon and enter Columbia and the guard who protects that lawmaking. It's a little difficult to imagine the nice Luteces torturing and murdering a man, but it may have come down to a matter of utility. Whether they did it themselves or hired someone to practise it, the "us" refers to them, and the sign — and even the body itself — are there to motivate Booker and impress upon his swiss-cheese brain that he is well-nigh to enter a very dangerous identify.

And if you lot needed any more confirmation, skip to the five:45 marker in this video from IGN. Irrational'due south artistic director Ken Levine identifies the body as the lighthouse keeper. He likewise mentions that the team added him very late in the game's development, so everything in this section may still be suspect. Only the important part is that that'south definitely the lighthouse keeper.

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Source: https://venturebeat.com/2013/05/27/bioshock-infinite-questions-answered/view-all/

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