Bioshock Infinite - a question (spoiler-heavy)

General Off-Topic Discussion
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NOTE: THIS REALLY IS SPOILER-HEAVY. I heavy-handedly spoil what’s possibly the crux of Bioshock Infinite. No spoiler tags for readability; the whole thread is spoilery. You’ve been warned.

Hey, y’all. There probably people here who played BioShock Infinite and its DLCs, right? And who enjoyed it, right? Right. I’ve played it a while ago, and am now playing the DLC, and I’ve a question that’s really bothering me. Well, two questions, really. I’m about midway through Burial At Sea ep1, and I don’t really want an answer to my question yet, but I do have to know whether a satisfactory answer exists.

Reason being, if no satisfactory answer exists, the writers didn’t think it through, and which makes me less involved and less willing to devote brainpower to whatever realisations come my way (it was quite a revelation to have the BaS Elizabeth know about the Sky Hooks - it instantly told me (the player) who she really was, which Elizabeth she really was. And then I saw her necklace. This realisation only happened because I had faith in the writers’ abilities to be coherent).

So, couple of quick questions. First off:

Booker DeWitt is Father Comstock and, in another reality, he’s Andrew Ryan. That’s taken as granted, yes? First question, then, is about the apparent age difference. How come Father Comstock, whose Columbia was at the turn of the century, looks so much older than Andrew Ryan, whose Rapture is a product of the early fifties? I had assumed that the baptism of Booker DeWitt was such a fulcral point that it was the same across realities, chronology included, but was I wrong in this assumption? Could it be that the baptism may have occurred at different times in different realities? The event itself a constant - but the chronology a variable?

Second question:

Burial at Sea has Booker DeWitt in the same reality as Andrew Ryan. As I said, I haven’t played Ep1 to completion yet, but this seems impossible as in any given reality, without prevarication, they’re the same person. But this Booker DeWitt is known to people in Rapture, so he hasn’t just been brought in…

Please don’t answer the second question directly. :slight_smile: Just tell me, can I look forward to a satisfying explanation?

Cheers!

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Parallel universes, man…

But seriously this is the first I’ve heard someone say Booker is also Ryan… There are echoes of the same things in each universe, but not necessarily a direct analogue. The anomaly of the PC splitting into protagonist and antagonist doesn’t have to happen in every infinity.

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Really? I thought that the idea of “there is always a man, there is always a tower” also extended into Rapture (even if it’s a towering DEPTH), especially since in the endgame of Infinite we actually visited Rapture briefly.

Of course, the pro/an-tagonist split doesn’t happen in every infinity - it happens exclusively in that particular reality, because the Luteces were pushing for it, and taking DeWitts from other universes. It was something forced - in BioShock the PC is Ryan’s son, in BioShock 2 he was someone I don’t really remember (a big daddy, right? I enjoyed part of it, but it’s forgettable when compared to the others). No paradox here, just brilliant scheming on Fontaine’s part.

That’s funny, I really thought that the game heavily suggested Ryan was another Comstock, and therefore another DeWitt… Maybe I read too much into it.

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Ryan is the analogue for Comstock but you’ve made me think - The PC was Ryan’s son in the reveal so perhaps that does kind of line up if you can imagine Comstock and Booker as father/son analogue (with himself!) and Fontaine/Daisy/Fink pushing the player toward this revelation. Booker and Liz also have Big Daddy/Little Sister relationship. The Luteces are just there and everywhere. They are my favorites.

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BTW, I finished chapter 1 of Burial at Sea and it turns out I needn’t have worried. :slight_smile: Even if my DeWitt = Ryan assumption were correct, Burial At Sea doesn’t contradict it, a neat trick.

I did have to check the BioShock Wiki afterwards, though. I couldn’t understand just who Sally actually was after that muddle, and why Elizabeth caused all of that to happen in the first place, and whether that climatic vision was a flashback or a hallucination (it was the presence of Elizabeth that made it hard for me to grasp). The wiki provided a nice, clear narrative.