Any connection between Booker/Comstock and Ryan/Jack is purely symbolic. It's not like Booker went through a wormhole and became Jack or Ryan. Maybe they share genetic similarities. Maybe they don't. You have a genetic fingerprint from hundreds of thousands of human beings that came before you, 99% of which you'll never know existed. The connection in Infinite isn't like the connection between Booker and Comstock, who are the same person with one variable introduced. Booker/Comstock are from a totally different era and age to Ryan/Jack.
Like, it's also not
the same lighthouse, or
the same city. Symbolically they're connected, but not literally. It's also not
the same man, even though they're symbolically connected. Booker being able to pull the leaver would be no different to Elizabeth doing the same thing. After all, she shares a genetic imprint of Booker.
I mean, Infinite is all about connecting the dots and forming relationships. But I think the Infinite/BioShock Booker/Ryan thing is purely symbolic. If there's any deeper connection there it's relatively meaningless as there's nothing more to it beyond symbolism.
Well if we consider time as one straight line, and Elizabeths killing booker at the point of baptism ceases all other realities, then Booker always was born, went to war, and drowned at a river during an attempted baptism by unknown forces.
The post-credit sequence then HAS to be some kind of dream as his life is fading or an afterlife type situation in which he is allowed to be with his daughter, absolved of his mistakes.
Right, but
if Booker drowns during the baptism, rejecting the Comstock reality from ever happening, there's still a variable for Booker running from the baptism and going on to have Anna. The constant of Booker drowning isn't applicable there, as it only negates Comstock.
The way I look at it there's two important unresolved problems with the narrative from all this discussion:
a) Did Booker die
during the
accepted baptism, leaving room for
rejected baptism? Or did he die
before the baptism process?
and b) What is the significance of the post-credits ending? If Booker died
during baptism, this can be reconciled as a variable. If Booker died
before the baptism, how does this sequence fit?
If Booker died during baptism acceptance I see the story as complete. Booker never became Comstock as that universe is inherently paradoxal, cannot exist, and collapses upon attempted existence. You perceive a linear sequence of events because time and consciousness are complicated things. And from this we can draw philosophical conversation.
If Booker died before the baptism then the ending sequence doesn't make a whole lot of sense from a logistical view of a quantum multiverse and perception of time. We can draw different philosophical discussion from this, but I'm not particularly fond of this interpretation.
The ending stuff that Elizabeth says is interesting. When she says to die before the decision is made, I'm not sure if she's referring to the decisions to be baptised, or the decision to become Comstock. I also dislike the notion that he died before the baptism, yet the game represents this symbolically through baptism. But again, discussion can be drawn from that too.
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