There are big plot holes in the story though, the entire premise which it's set around is a plot hole.
Bioshock Infinite
- Thread starter ShadowRunner
- Start date
Spoiler tag your problem and let's see if we agree?
Billy Idol
Legend
Yeah, bring it on!
(((interference)))
Veteran
Like I said before it's the same plothole most plots...
involving time travel suffer from - variants of the Grandfather paradox:
For example when the Elizabeths drown Booker at the end, this stops both the Bookers who accept the baptism or reject it from occurring.
Therefore it also prevents Elizabeth/Anna from ever gaining the special powers she has to go back and kill Booker in the first place.
This also mean that the epilogue where the alcoholic Booker opens the door and sees Anna's cot couldn't have happened. Since Booker became alcoholic due to his guilt from Wounded Knee which wasn't absolved by the baptism (as Comstock was)
For example when the Elizabeths drown Booker at the end, this stops both the Bookers who accept the baptism or reject it from occurring.
Therefore it also prevents Elizabeth/Anna from ever gaining the special powers she has to go back and kill Booker in the first place.
This also mean that the epilogue where the alcoholic Booker opens the door and sees Anna's cot couldn't have happened. Since Booker became alcoholic due to his guilt from Wounded Knee which wasn't absolved by the baptism (as Comstock was)
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That is why we can't travel in time, it will mess everything up, you should spoiler tag your whole post btw.
In any case, that was the idea with the drowning, reset time.. which of course can't be done because of what i wrote above..
In any case, that was the idea with the drowning, reset time.. which of course can't be done because of what i wrote above..
but does not in bioshock infinite, its run on the premise that it is working and able to be done? Bioshock Infinite is not our earth, so the physics and logic can be bend according to the story writer.
Theres some game that just plain silly (but trying to be serious), but on Infinite its still enjoyable.
Theres some game that just plain silly (but trying to be serious), but on Infinite its still enjoyable.
RenegadeRocks
Legend
No...
Booker had two choices: accept Baptism or not. she took Booker to the universe where he was going to accept baptism and killed him , hence all universes which spawned from Comstock ended there. But the reality in which he did not accept baptism remained. Anna was born.
Ok
First of all the whole premise revolves around the the futility of choice since regardless of a decision made there is always a universe where a different decision is made. The endings tells us that in having Elizabeth kill Booker we end up in a situation where the events of Bioshock Infinite never took place, since Booker who accepts baptism gets drowned by Elizabeth, a being that is actually from the future relative to that time period. But then there should be atleast one universe where baptised Booker doesn't gets drowned by Elizabeth...no ? If that's the case then there is atleast one universe where he goes on to become Comstock. Basically it's a never ending circle, because regardless of what happens, the theory which the game presents pretty much makes it impossible to have a finite result and that there is always a possibility for events to unfold in a different way.
Next up, The Booker and Elizabeth we started the game with leave their universe. What about the Booker and Elizabeth from the multiple universes they jump into ? And what of the Columbia they left when they first decided to step through a tear into an alternate universe ?
Basically Time Travel plots are impossible to write without flaws in the logic they set up.
Next up, The Booker and Elizabeth we started the game with leave their universe. What about the Booker and Elizabeth from the multiple universes they jump into ? And what of the Columbia they left when they first decided to step through a tear into an alternate universe ?
Basically Time Travel plots are impossible to write without flaws in the logic they set up.
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RenegadeRocks
Legend
Hmmm... What u r saying has implications after the game's ending, so we can say the game's plot still stands.
we may continue again that in another reality Booker refused to be drowned and the chain never ended
And as for your other point
when they killed booker who was about to accept baptism , they fstopped all possible universes with columbia from happening. There are multiple universes with different columbias but the graph starts from one point , the baptism of Booker. So, the columbia they left also vanished, so did any columbia they stepped into.
When they first went into the tear , Booker had already died in that universe. He was a martyr, the game takes care of that. As for Elizabeth, maybe she as still in the tower, re captured? Game doesn't dwell on that, if I didn't miss something.
And later on when Booker meets the Old Elizabeth , she clearly tells him that the Songbird always kills Bookers in all universes. So whatever tear he goes into after a certain time frame, the Booker of that universe is Dead, killed by Songbird. Thats why Old Elizabeth gives him the song for controlling songbird, so that he may live in one of the universes ( to die later once Elizabeth's powers are freed from the siphon.
When they first went into the tear , Booker had already died in that universe. He was a martyr, the game takes care of that. As for Elizabeth, maybe she as still in the tower, re captured? Game doesn't dwell on that, if I didn't miss something.
And later on when Booker meets the Old Elizabeth , she clearly tells him that the Songbird always kills Bookers in all universes. So whatever tear he goes into after a certain time frame, the Booker of that universe is Dead, killed by Songbird. Thats why Old Elizabeth gives him the song for controlling songbird, so that he may live in one of the universes ( to die later once Elizabeth's powers are freed from the siphon.
speaking of old Elizabeth, then there should be a universe where she doesn't calls Booker into the future so he never gets the codes to disable Songbird ?
RenegadeRocks
Legend
speaking of old Elizabeth, then there should be a universe where she doesn't calls Booker into the future so he never gets the codes to disable Songbird ?
There were !
There was only one where she could call him as she says that ' I used all my power to call you here'. Even after that were universes where they failed. In one they succeeded, but that released Elizabeth's powers and that changed everything. The whole effort was to make sure that 'one' possibility finally happens!
And regarding the end, I was thinking,
what can he really do against Elizabeth. He can't really refuse drowning, or she would lock him up in some dimension where he can never escape from.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
No, think about it as a circle, and at certain points in the circle a new "reality" is spawned. Hence there are infinite Bioshock realities. Each new reality can potentially spawn another infinite set of infinite realities.
If you assume that the last scene represents killing the Booker that accepted Baptism (the dialog actually suggests killing booker himself before he was born) that just means that all possible realities with Booker as Comstock are terminated. Those realities cease to exist. Thus the game you just played never existed and never happened.
Comstock never takes root and hence all realities spawned by Comstock existing are erased.
But up until that point they do exist and hence you can change things. But once things are changed those realities don't exist. And going forward there is no need to have any mechanism to change it into what the new reality is because the new reality is just the existing realities that didn't have Comstock in the first place.
IE - all surviving realities don't require Comstock to be killed. Hence there is no need for an Elizabeth from that reality, no need for a Songbird, no need for the old Elizabeth to provide a note, etc. You've removed an infinite set of realities spawned by the circular nature of time travel and the consequences it can engender.
So the infinite possibilities of Booker unbaptized remain. The infinite possibilities with Booker as Comstock no longer remain.
Another way to think of it is traveling along a tree with infinite branches. If you go back and prune off a branch, all other branches that exist because of the branch you pruned cease to exist. It doesn't matter that the action of removing that branch originates within some branch of that branch itself. It's a self contained branch. And hence doesn't affect all the other branches of the tree that aren't spawned by that one branch. It just ceases to be as if it had never existed in the first place.
As well since that infinite set of realities no longer exists, any tangential contact between that reality and other realities also cease to exist. Hence in no remaining realities is the baby Elizabeth sold to Comstock. And hence in no remaining realities does Booker ever go to the city in the sky.
That's what happens in Bioshock Infinite. You've played a game that never existed with a story that never existed once you finish the game. The game and the reality of the game only exist up until the point you finish.
Time travel is only a problem if you assume that everything is linear and hence everything that will happen must happen and everything that has happened must happen. But if you think of it as a tree of infinite realities then there is no problem.
If you assume that the last scene represents killing the Booker that accepted Baptism (the dialog actually suggests killing booker himself before he was born) that just means that all possible realities with Booker as Comstock are terminated. Those realities cease to exist. Thus the game you just played never existed and never happened.
Comstock never takes root and hence all realities spawned by Comstock existing are erased.
But up until that point they do exist and hence you can change things. But once things are changed those realities don't exist. And going forward there is no need to have any mechanism to change it into what the new reality is because the new reality is just the existing realities that didn't have Comstock in the first place.
IE - all surviving realities don't require Comstock to be killed. Hence there is no need for an Elizabeth from that reality, no need for a Songbird, no need for the old Elizabeth to provide a note, etc. You've removed an infinite set of realities spawned by the circular nature of time travel and the consequences it can engender.
So the infinite possibilities of Booker unbaptized remain. The infinite possibilities with Booker as Comstock no longer remain.
Another way to think of it is traveling along a tree with infinite branches. If you go back and prune off a branch, all other branches that exist because of the branch you pruned cease to exist. It doesn't matter that the action of removing that branch originates within some branch of that branch itself. It's a self contained branch. And hence doesn't affect all the other branches of the tree that aren't spawned by that one branch. It just ceases to be as if it had never existed in the first place.
As well since that infinite set of realities no longer exists, any tangential contact between that reality and other realities also cease to exist. Hence in no remaining realities is the baby Elizabeth sold to Comstock. And hence in no remaining realities does Booker ever go to the city in the sky.
That's what happens in Bioshock Infinite. You've played a game that never existed with a story that never existed once you finish the game. The game and the reality of the game only exist up until the point you finish.
Time travel is only a problem if you assume that everything is linear and hence everything that will happen must happen and everything that has happened must happen. But if you think of it as a tree of infinite realities then there is no problem.
Regards,
SB
RenegadeRocks
Legend
But then didn't her power gets released only in one universe ? Mindfuck
So? Didn't get what u r trying to say here. Once that happened, even if only once, she stopped everything. I think its pretty clear now.
My only confusion with that is there still has to be an Elizabeth that travels back in time and kills the Booker who accepts Baptism. But if there is no Elizabeth to begin with then what ? I mean to simplify this think of it in a way that Elizabeth time travels to the past and kills Booker "Comstock" Dewitt, which would mean that Comstocks and Elizabeths across all the universes would cease to exist. But then what of the Booker Dewitt in the past in the same universe where he gets killed ? There is no Elizabeth to stop him from becoming Comstock since she ceased to exist apparently. Considering the fact that timespace doesn't matter here, this is something that can happen. no?
It's like Terminator, if a Terminator is sent to kill John Connor and lets assume Connor dies then that also means the Terminator to kill John Conno never existed as it was never manufactured, because of which they would never be able to kill John Connor from a previous timeline in the same universe.
I might be getting confused for nothing though.
It's like Terminator, if a Terminator is sent to kill John Connor and lets assume Connor dies then that also means the Terminator to kill John Conno never existed as it was never manufactured, because of which they would never be able to kill John Connor from a previous timeline in the same universe.
I might be getting confused for nothing though.
RenegadeRocks
Legend
He has , and I have , already answered ur question.
once u have played thru the game and reached the end: the game never happened at all you are right that once comstock drowns, there is no elizabeth, but there was once who drowned him, but after his drowning all of it vanished without trace. Post Comstock's drowning, yes, you won't find any elizabeth or her powers, you will find only Anna.
you are right that once comstock drowns, there is no elizabeth, but there was once who drowned him, but after his drowning all of it vanished without trace. Post Comstock's drowning, yes, you won't find any elizabeth or her powers, you will find only Anna.RenegadeRocks
Legend
But there is a doubt there for sure cos
when the game ends, all the Elizabeths vanish, except the one with the powers. Maybe cos now she can transcend time and space, she is immune to it ? I dunno. Even I had found it weird that that one Elizbeth did not dissappear
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