WARNING:
BIOSHOCK INFINITE
ENDING SPOILERS AHEAD
“There's always a lighthouse, there's always a man, there's always a city.”
If you're reading this far, if you clicked the link to read on with this article, then either you've beaten the game, or you're an idiot.
I don't say that lightly. There are a lot of great games throughout history, and some of them have had absolutely incredible endings. But in my 33 years of gaming, I think I can safely say Bioshock Infinite has one of the most mind-blowing endings I have ever experienced. It took me a long time to digest; hell I still haven't picked up on every single nuance. It's the only ending I've ever experienced that made a second playthrough into a completely new and different game, even though nothing has changed apart from my knowledge and perspective. And so if you haven't experienced the ending, and you don't care if it is spoiled for you? Yes. I think you're an idiot.
So here. I'm going to post some screenshots, enough so that you deliberately have to scroll down to read further. I'm giving you one last chance to back out, if you have not finished Bioshock Infinite yet.
Okay. That should be enough.
Never before have I experienced an ending like Bioshock Infinite. I've played games and seen movies with branching timelines and alternate realities; it's been done. It's not the events that happened, so much as how they are woven together. The story of the game feeds you threads that you don't even realize are connected until you see the whole tapestry. Almost every single event, every line of dialogue, manages to seem completely innocuous and direct, until you have finished the game. At that point, everything changes. Everything. Lines of dialogue that seemed to mean nothing suddenly have deep impact. And everything said by the Luteces suddenly comes off as simultaneously funny and a little bit sad.
Throughout the entire game, Booker DeWitt is simply trying to get Elizabeth away from Comstock and Columbia. It seems pretty straightforward. We're given choices along the way that presumably, like the other Bioshock games, will give us the "good ending" or the "bad ending", or something in between. We know Elizabeth can rip open tears in time and space, and into alternate timelines and realities, but at first it comes across as a gimmick; a game mechanic wedged into the storyline. This could not be further from the truth, as this ability IS the story.
In the end, the game takes all of the cards we've been dealt throughout the game, and flips them over to show their real meaning. Choice is an illusion. We are not in control of reality; instead of impressing our will upon the world, we create branching realities. And when a man whose soul has been broken by war decides whether or not to be baptized, it creates two branches. One where Booker DeWitt chooses not to be, and creates a reality where he drowns himself in liquor and gambling, eventually selling his child to pay off debts, and another where he is rechristened as Zachary Comstock, and he creates an American extremist city in the sky, desperately in need of a child to continue his legacy. This adds massive poignancy to the seemingly harmless line from the blind priest in the very beginning: "Brother, the only way to Columbia is through rebirth in the sweet waters of baptism." It refers to the situation at hand, but also that the worlds in which Columbia and Comstock exist could never have happened if Booker chose not to go through with his baptism after Wounded Knee.
One of my favorite aspects are the ties with the original Bioshock that are simultaneously blatant and opaque. What is achieved through quantum physics in Infinite is achieved through genetics in Bioshock. We know that Booker IS Comstock. And yet Jack...what is he? He's a clone of Andrew Ryan. Booker and Ryan are versions of the same archetypal men in different universes. In one universe, Booker embraced religion and the American ideal, became Comstock, and built Columbia. In another universe, Andrew Ryan eschewed religion, rejected American principles, and built Rapture. Elizabeth tells us that there is always a lighthouse, there is always a man, and there is always a city. I personally don't believe this means that Ryan and Booker are the same person, but that in the framework, they are the same role. That idea is, however, muddied by the fact that Booker is able to use Rapture technology that the first game told us was genetically coded to Ryan's DNA, so...take from that what you will.
The line becomes a little blurred when we look at the parallels between Booker, Songbird, and Elizabeth, and the Big Daddies and the Little Sisters. It becomes an interpretation of literally versus thematically. For the literal, it's said and implied through the game that most of Fink's anachronistic creations come from the tears, and that the Songbird comes from views into Rapture. Its design is based off the the Big Daddy. However, if you really look at it? Booker is Elizabeth's Big Daddy. He is unaware that he is her father, but still feels bonded to her and carries this compulsion to protect her at all costs. There's even the parallels of Eleanor Lamb, and Elizabeth being called the Lamb Of Columbia, as well as the more obvious, Booker Dewitt and Big Daddy.
Because of this, there also theories that Songbird is another version of Booker from another world that Fink attempted to craft into his own version of a Big Daddy to protect Elizabeth, per Comstock's orders. It's painfully noticeable that Songbird is not fleshed out in the game. The player is given little to no backstory or explanation for such a massive role in the story. We're just told that he is her protector, was her only friend, and he's always been around. No more than that. There are, however, some very suspicious character parallels between Booker, Comstock, and Songbird: they are all Elizabeth's protectors, they are all father figures, and they all die by drowning. I wouldn't say that it is the smoking gun for the theory, but it's definitely a very strong element.
I also like what the ending presents in more "meta" terms of gaming. There has been some grumbling from players on the lack of choice, and how the game presents you with several obvious choices throughout the game, yet they have absolutely no bearing on the outcome. This is kind of the point of the story; that choice is an illusion.
But where it really becomes poignant is at the end, as we see the infinite lighthouses, with the infinite Bookers walking with the infinite Elizabeths. Without coming out and saying it, these can (and I feel should) be viewed as other gamers playing the same "reality" (i.e., game).
Think about it this way. You and I set out to play Bioshock Infinite. We buy our own copies, maybe even play on separate platforms. I choose heads, you choose tails. I spare Slade, you kill him. I juke left, you juke right. I play cautiously and use cover, relying on guns, while you run around deftly, combining vigors. I take my time, you rush through. However we do it, we play the game DRASTICALLY differently. And yet in the end? We both end up on that same dock with Elizabeth and the infinite lighthouses. Change was an illusion, and we ended up in the same place together.
Throughout the game, more musical cues showed up. I had missed the Beach Boys song, "God Only Knows", sung by a barbershop quartet in the beginning, as well as the fact that the crowd at the fair was singing "Goodnight, Irene", which would not be recorded until the 1930s. In a Shantytown bar, before the events with the gunsmith Chen Lin, a voice pours out of a phonograph singing a jazz rendition of Soft Cell's "Tainted Love". After those events, a young black girl sits alone on a ledge, crooning a gospel-ish version of CCR's "Fortunate Son". And then later on, there's...really? "Shiny Happy People"? Why not. After all it does come off of R.E.M.'s album "Out Of Time".
All of this is explained by Voxaphone as music heard through the various tears to different times and worlds, but it's still a strange and wonderful element to the game that gives you a very distinct feeling early on in the game that there is a lot more depth to what's going on than just "Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt". And here I thought it was just simple time travel...
I know that right now I'm not even beginning to scratch the surface of the various elements contained in Bioshock Infinite's finale. I could wax on about the ending of Bioshock Infinite for hours; I think this has been an almost universal feeling for everyone that has played. Being a very brief game, clocking in around 10 hours, there was this tense period of about three days after the game's release where most people got their hands on it, and everyone who had beaten it was nervously glancing at their friends, going "Did you beat it yet? Have you finished?", because no one wanted to spoil it, but everyone wanted to discuss it! Did you pick up on this? How did you interpret that? What do you think they meant by...
So while there are many things left unsaid here, I'll trail off for now. If you have any thoughts or interpretations of your own, or ever want to discuss it? By all means speak your mind in the comments below, or you can email me at TheCrankyOldGamer@gmail.com, or feel free to start a discussion about it on our Facebook page! This game just begs for debate and discussion, and I would honestly love to hear from some of my readers on this!
In closing, I'm going to leave you with what is possibly the best and easiest-to-follow flowchart explaining the timelines and events in the game. If I knew who created it, I'd happily credit them; all I know is that I found this in /r/Bioshock/ and it really helped the pieces fall into place (click to expand):
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