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SPOILER Bioshock Infinite SPOILER discussion

SiskoKid

Member
Lutece describes Booker as their hairshirt. Looking that up, it says a hairshirt is a cilice, or a cloth or animal hair worn close to the skin that was used in some religious traditions to induce discomfort or pain as a sign of repentance and atonement.

So the Lutece twins are looking for atonement as well.

Elizabeth says, "I can see ALL the doors and what's behind all the doors. And behind ONE OF THEM, I see him." Booker replies, "Comstock."

I believe because of that comment, they did kill Comstock and reset things so Booker has his baby Anna in the end.
 

scy

Member
Maybe I should've clarified :x I mean all the money needed to fund Lutece's research that enabled Columbia to exist. The money used to build Columbia itself. The odd gap from "betting on the races" Booker to "built a flying city" Comstock just strikes me as odd.

Like, those are some rich followers if it's really just the early supporters from before Columbia started to take shape. I understand how he became richer AFTER Columbia but it's the period before it that confuses me.
 

LiK

Member
Maybe I should've clarified :x I mean all the money needed to fund Lutece's research that enabled Columbia to exist. The money used to build Columbia itself. The odd gap from "betting on the races" Booker to "built a flying city" Comstock just strikes me as odd.

Like, those are some rich followers if it's really just the early supporters from before Columbia started to take shape. I understand how he became richer AFTER Columbia but it's the period before it that confuses me.

i think a lot of the work was from the poor people who earned very little to help build the city. Shantytown was a nice example of this.
 

DSmalls84

Member
considering this was how comstock looked a few iterations ago, do you think the story was wildly different?


edit: actually, the more i look at it, the more it resembles booker. perhaps it was too obvious?

I think I prefer this Comstock design even if it does look similar to Booker ( I never guessed that when I saw previews). I'm not sure what it is but I just think he looks like a better villain than crazy bearded old man Comstock.
 

scy

Member
I think I prefer this Comstock design even if it does look similar to Booker ( I never guessed that when I saw previews). I'm not sure what it is but I just think he looks like a better villain than crazy bearded old man Comstock.

Would you follow a prophet that has no beard?

Be honest now.
 

Blinck

Member
Just wanted to hop in here to say I absolutely loved the game and story.

The part when Elizabeth opens a Tear into rapture...chills all over me man !

I'll be honest, while I understood most of the story ( and absolutely loved it) I was still confused in one point or another by the end, it's just so much stuff going on with the different realities.... But maybe I'm just a bit slow when it comes to this ( and English is also not my native language).

Did any of you feel the same way, or were you guys able to get everything on the first play through ?
 

LiK

Member
Just wanted to hop in here to say I absolutely loved the game and story.

The part when Elizabeth opens a Tear into rapture...chills all over me man !

I'll be honest, while I understood most of the story ( and absolutely loved it) I was still confused in one point or another by the end, it's just so much stuff going on with the different realities.... But maybe I'm just a bit slow when it comes to this ( and English is also not my native language).

Did any of you feel the same way, or were you guys able to get everything on the first play through ?

understood 98% of it. the rest is theorectical.
 
While in terms of pure design I really like beardless Comstock, old bearded papa Comstock makes more sense as a wizened, fatherly prophet figure that could lead a group of followers. Beardless Comstock looks sleazy.
 

Alienous

Member
Did Booker actually have a debt or was it just Comstock wanting a child?

8EjFuda.jpg

It does seem that Booker is actually in debt.
 

DSmalls84

Member
Would you follow a prophet that has no beard?

Be honest now.

No and that was the first thought that crossed my mind when looking at the design.

Old Comstock = 19th century American politician look

New Comstock = Biblical Prophet look

I wonder if it was changed just to throw us off the trail of the story, or if the story was altered and the character needed to be changed based off of that.
 
The vigors, there are fewer vigors than there were plasmids in bioshock. And from my experience most of them were quite useless on hard. Fire and Lightning vigors were pretty much pointless, too little dmg and effect. Much easier and better to just spam possesion. That way you create a distraction, and you're guaranteed at least one dead enemy. Charge is another one that didn't really feel very useful, if you're fighting agains't 1-3 guys, it makes no sense to use it over possesion. If you're fighting more than that, you're sure as fuck not gonna want to charge right into them.

Bassically I stuck almost exclusively to possession and the bucking bronco vigors for the entirety of the game. Why wouldn't I? Possession works on fucking every thing except handymen, and bucking bronco allows me to suspend a ton of enemies in the air for a long period of time, and is pretty much spammable.

Man, the ghost fights were a bitch and a half. I wish I could figure out better how not to take damage.

It's funny, I thought Charge was wildly overpowered. Upgraded Charge instantly refills your shields. Any time my shields got low I would just charge into a dude. Handymen where stupid easy. Just charge and Shotgun them over and over again. Same with the Ghost fights.

It does seem that Booker is actually in debt.

With the way coin flips go for they guy, you gotta feel for a gambling addict in this universe.
 

Pezking

Member
Elizabeth says, "I can see ALL the doors and what's behind all the doors. And behind ONE OF THEM, I see him." Booker replies, "Comstock."

I believe because of that comment, they did kill Comstock and reset things so Booker has his baby Anna in the end.

Nice observation. I think I'll believe that as well.
 

Alienous

Member
No and that was the first thought that crossed my mind when looking at the design.

Old Comstock = 19th century American politician look

New Comstock = Biblical Prophet look

I wonder if it was changed just to throw us off the trail of the story, or if the story was altered and the character needed to be changed based off of that.

It seems like, initially, the team was shy of the religious themes. I suppose it was going to be 'The Founders' inspired by religion, but it became fully about religion.
 

delleps

Neo Member
I had a terrifying moment in this game, and it wasn't even intentional. The parts where you're following the ghost footsteps, I was walking slowly through the town, and the footprints came up. I stopped and looked at them, and then when I looked back up, I saw something moving through he cracks in a building, and then a second later I was being stared at by glowing yellow eyes. It turned out to just be one of those fucking vending machines, but damn did that freak me out.
 

Blinck

Member
For those who did it: How did a second play-through feel? Was it still awesome and did help solidify the story and maybe understand some things you hadn't before?
 
What's so special about this timeline that made it end all of the time loops previously before?

What changed/was different in this timeline? What trigger him to meet old Elizabeth in this timeline and not the past timeline?
 

SiskoKid

Member
What's so special about this timeline that made it end all of the time loops previously before?

What changed/was different in this timeline? What trigger him to meet old Elizabeth in this timeline and not the past timeline?

I commented on this above, but I'll copy and paste here.

--- Elizabeth says, "I can see ALL the doors and what's behind all the doors. And behind ONE OF THEM, I see him." Booker replies, "Comstock."

I believe because of that comment, they did kill Comstock and reset things so Booker has his baby Anna in the end.---

It's just the reality of their universe it seems. She saw one opportunity to actually get rid of the reality of Comstock entirely in all possibility spaces. She then asks Booker if he's sure he wants to kill Comstock because she knows what that actually entails.

Now that Comstock will never exist in any possibility space, Booker never sells his baby Anna. Meaning Elizabeth never exists either. I think all Elizabeths disappear when Comstock dies and now we're just left with Bookers and Annas.
 
A City of Lighthouses.

Yo dawg, I heard you like lighthouses?

What's so special about this timeline that made it end all of the time loops previously before?

What changed/was different in this timeline? What trigger him to meet old Elizabeth in this timeline and not the past timeline?

I think just getting that far. Old Elizabeth mentions that Songbird always stops him, so my guess is that at the bridge, when Elizabeth gives herself to Songbird before Songbird kills him is the defining and changing moment.
 

delleps

Neo Member
According to Sean in the other thread, you can board the zepplins and take them down yourself, rather than waiting for songbird to kill them all.


Did anyone realize this?
 

Jofamo

Member
One thing I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around is the multiple Booker attempts throughout the game. That he's tried numerous times and this is the only one that's been successful, thus the heads or tails.

Where are the Lutece's pulling all these Bookers from? Because only one Booker in all these timelines sold his daughter to Comstock.

Or is it as simple as them pulling the Bookers from a point after he sold Anna? I guess there was a 20 year period between selling her and his life going to complete utter shit (the ruined apartment).
 
According to Sean in the other thread, you can board the zepplins and take them down yourself, rather than waiting for songbird to kill them all.


Did anyone realize this?

Yeah that's how I took them down on my 1999 playthrough. Way more efficient having Songbird take out the gunships and to take down the zeppelin's yourself.
 
I commented on this above, but I'll copy and paste here.

--- Elizabeth says, "I can see ALL the doors and what's behind all the doors. And behind ONE OF THEM, I see him." Booker replies, "Comstock."

I believe because of that comment, they did kill Comstock and reset things so Booker has his baby Anna in the end.---

It's just the reality of their universe it seems. She saw one opportunity to actually get rid of the reality of Comstock entirely in all possibility spaces. She then asks Booker if he's sure he wants to kill Comstock because she knows what that actually entails.

Now that Comstock will never exist in any possibility space, Booker never sells his baby Anna. Meaning Elizabeth never exists either. I think all Elizabeths disappear when Comstock dies and now we're just left with Bookers and Annas.

I vote for this interpretation. <3
 

CzarTim

Member
One thing I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around is the multiple Booker attempts throughout the game. That he's tried numerous times and this is the only one that's been successful, thus the heads or tails.

Where are the Lutece's pulling all these Bookers from? Because only one Booker in all these timelines sold his daughter to Comstock.

Or is it as simple as them pulling the Bookers from a point after he sold Anna? I guess there was a 20 year period between selling her and his life going to complete utter shit (the ruined apartment).

There was an infinite number of Bookers who sold and infinite number of Annas to an infinite number of Comstocks.
 
According to Sean in the other thread, you can board the zepplins and take them down yourself, rather than waiting for songbird to kill them all.


Did anyone realize this?

DUDE WUT!? Why did I not think about doing this. Fuck me, I think too laterally when it comes to games.
 

SpudBud

Member
I was thinking about what kind of city would be interesting for a new bioshock and a 1939 World Fair City of Tomorrow would be pretty interesting but Rapture kinda hits a lot those beats already.
 

SoulUnison

Banned
I was thinking about what kind of city would be interesting for a new bioshock and a 1939 World Fair City of Tomorrow would be pretty interesting but Rapture kinda hits a lot those beats already.

I honestly can't think of any kinds of "Hidden City" that would top Rapture or Columbia.

I can only come up with some sort of subterranean city, and a space station.

It's sort of like they blew their creative wad too early on Rapture, and they miraculously one upped it with Columbia, but where can they possibly go from there?

Infinite basically tells us that there's a boundless amount of Lighthouses out there, connected to an unlimited number of fantastical cities, but we've already seen the best 2, right?
 
I honestly can't think of any kinds of "Hidden City" that would top Rapture or Columbia.

I can only come up with some sort of subterranean city, and a space station.

It's sort of like they blew their creative wad too early on Rapture, and they miraculously one upped it with Columbia, but where can they possibly go from there?

Infinite basically tells us that there's a boundless amount of Lighthouses out there, connected to an unlimited number of fantastical cities, but we've already seen the best 2, right?

Maybe Levine has already accounted for that.....
 

Jofamo

Member
There was an infinite number of Bookers who sold and infinite number of Annas to an infinite number of Comstocks.

But see that's where the confusion lies. THIS Booker sold HIS Anna to THIS Comstock. He then travels to THIS Comstock's universe and gets back HIS Anna. It's not some other Booker from some other universe taking back a completely different Bookers Anna. Else the emotional impact is negated.
 

DatDude

Banned
Finished this last night. Was a pretty good game. But I kept wanting to go an play the original bioshock instead. That game just felt like it was better in all aspects.

Setting in infinite was interesting at the start, but after a while it kinda felt like they didn't do much with it, yeah there were airships and a lot of clouds, but that was kinda it. It didn't ooze with the atmosphere of being a cloud city in every nook and cranny like rapture did.

The linearity of the game was a pretty dissapointing as well considering the more open levels of bioshock. It was standard fare move from point a to b to c, etc.

Enemy encounters were vastly inferior to the ones in bioshock. It's bassically just wave after wave of enemies in infinite, felt very inspired by dragon age 2 in that regard...

The handymen as well were absolute crap compared to big daddies. Dunno if it was because I played on hard, but the vigors pretty much did fuck all to them, crows stunned them for maybe 2 seconds. They just felt stupidly strong, it was impossible to get distance on them since they can jump an infinite distance and height it seems, so even if I jumped on the rails and went to the other side of the combat area, they would be right in my face again within seconds, knocking me back and draining all shield + some health in one go. Every handyman fight bassically boiled down to me kiting like a mad man for 10 minutes while getting a few shots off here and there.

Compare that to the Big Daddies were you could set up a ton of plasmid traps and shit in a room, maybe hack some turrets as well. Then go and aggro the big daddy, lure him into your awesome trap, and then unleash hell on him, they were still strong, but at least they were reasonable strong, with limits.

The vigors, there are fewer vigors than there were plasmids in bioshock. And from my experience most of them were quite useless on hard. Fire and Lightning vigors were pretty much pointless, too little dmg and effect. Much easier and better to just spam possesion. That way you create a distraction, and you're guaranteed at least one dead enemy. Charge is another one that didn't really feel very useful, if you're fighting agains't 1-3 guys, it makes no sense to use it over possesion. If you're fighting more than that, you're sure as fuck not gonna want to charge right into them.

Bassically I stuck almost exclusively to possession and the bucking bronco vigors for the entirety of the game. Why wouldn't I? Possession works on fucking every thing except handymen, and bucking bronco allows me to suspend a ton of enemies in the air for a long period of time, and is pretty much spammable.

The story was probably the only really good part of infinite. It was very interesting, well-written and not corny. Though I saw the "twist" about dewitt being combstock coming from miles away, felt very obvious considering the whole multiverse theme they were doing. A shame really that they couldn't match the would you kindly twist from the original bioshock. But that does seem like a pretty unrealistic goal.

Overall I feel like Bioshock Infinite felt a bit like a game where they had a lot of boxes they needed to check. But didn't really have the drive and passion to make the things in those boxes truly great. Unlike the original Bioshock, which just felt like such a passion project where everything was made by people that just fucking loved the game they were making.

So yeah, that's my oppinion of the game. Dunno if this will attract a lot of angry people, since it seems like this game is extremely well liked by most people. Just keep in mind this is just how I feel personally :p

Sounds like all you were doing is constantly comparing it back to Bioshock 1 instead of comparing to it's own merits.
 

Bob White

Member
Just beat it. Awesome, awesome game.

Can someone tell me why Comstock is able to get visions? Did I miss something? Also, why does Elizabeth have her God powers?
 

CzarTim

Member
But see that's where the confusion lies. THIS Booker sold HIS Anna to THIS Comstock. He then travels to THIS Comstock's universe and gets back HIS Anna. It's not some other Booker from some other universe taking back a completely different Bookers Anna. Else the emotional impact is negated.

Right, we witnessed the one where it worked. The Luteces weren't pulling other Bookers in to one timeline, they pulled this Booker into this timeline, and it worked.
 

Alienous

Member
Wait, seriously? That's fucking cool.

If you didn't skyline up to one Zeppelin, while telling Songbird to take care of the other one, I can see why that set-piece wouldn't be seen as one of the greatest in modern gaming.

To get off of the zeppelin's you have to use the Vox's airships as platforms to the main deck of the ship.
 

SiskoKid

Member
But see that's where the confusion lies. THIS Booker sold HIS Anna to THIS Comstock. He then travels to THIS Comstock's universe and gets back HIS Anna. It's not some other Booker from some other universe taking back a completely different Bookers Anna. Else the emotional impact is negated.

So I think the answer here is that everyone is connected to all their possibility spaces. So you can pull any Booker from any timeline, and because of the side effects of hopping through the portals of space/time, you see that Booker sometimes sees visions of his other reality spaces hence the nose bleeds. And because of that, his memory isn't really put together since he doesn't really remember his baby at all. The game isn't about Booker saving his baby (until the ending of the game). His goal is to save the adult girl and bring her back to settle the debt.

But, in the end, Elizabeth says she sees all possibility spaces and in only ONE of those spaces, she sees an opportunity to get rid of Comstock from all possibility spaces. Now that she's godlike in powers, Booker is starting to realize the reality around him and realize that he did have a baby and he did sell her off. This is where the emotional impact actually is.

Now that she sees the opportunity to 'smother Comstock in his crib,' meaning his rebirth as a religious man, she asks Booker if he's sure he wants to kill him knowing full well that if Booker gives her the go ahead it means killing Comstock/Booker and Elizabeth in the process.

After Comstock is killed, Comstock and Elizabeth cease to exist in all possibility spaces. Leaving only multiple timelines of Bookers and Annas.
 

Blinck

Member
Just beat it. Awesome, awesome game.

Can someone tell me why Comstock is able to get visions? Did I miss something? Also, why does Elizabeth have her God powers?

He was able to see into the most probable futures with Lucetes contraption, from what I understood.

Elizabeth got her God-like powers because of all the experimentation Comstock did on her. However she only got the full set of her powers once we destroy the Siphon, which was limiting her abilities.
 

Zios

Banned
There was an infinite number of Bookers who sold and infinite number of Annas to an infinite number of Comstocks.

So did we only fix one of the universes in which Booker dies before the baptism? Or did Elizabeth with her god like powers, "pull the root"(killed Booker) from one universe which some how fixed the infinite amount of universes which looped this constant effect?
 
If you didn't skyline up to one Zeppelin, while telling Songbird to take care of the other one, I can see why that set-piece wouldn't be seen as one of the greatest in modern gaming.

To get off of the zeppelin's you have to use the Vox's airships as platforms to the main deck of the ship.

Naw, you can jump straight from the zeppelins onto the skyline.
 
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