Bioshock Infinite

[Tbone]

Make sure you play this game! So far it's great. It really surprised me with how much it's making me think. I'm not very far into it, but I have some crazy theories about the game. They may not be right, but so far it's fun to think about where it's going. Please don't spoil anything! When I have time I'll post my theories in spoiler tags!

Spoilers (Do not read if you have not beaten the game): Basically I think Elizabeth is Anna and Booker's daughter, but they are stuck in a time loop. Elizabeth will eventually go back in time and have a kid with Booker (yup, incest) and that kid also gets trapped in the tower again and again. I also have a theory that Compstock (the Prophet) IS Booker, but my brain starts to hurt when I try to make all this work out. I think Booker night be trying to get out of the "infinite" time loop, apparent by the warnings Booker gets. There's evidence to back all this up, but I'm still at work. I'll post more later.

Clues:
You're in a loop
-The name is Bioshock INFINITE and quickly establishes that time malleable. The title alone suggests an infinite loop.
-Bioshock games always have a twist, so this would be one direction they could go.
-Elizabeth can create or expose tears in time and space. Some of these tears lead to the future. My theory is that those tears show the present still moving forward, despite that you and/or Elizabeth are stuck in the 1912 time loop.
-Comstock is a prophet who knows the future. How does he know it? Because he's lived it, possibly over and over.

Elizabeth is your daughter:
-It is revealed that you have a kid but so far it hasn't said what happened to the kid. Meanwhile Elizabeth is a miracle child that only was in the womb for 7 days. Follow the mysterious time travelling baby.
-In a dream/flashback someone is banging on your office door demanding Anna. There with you is Elizabeth. When you awake, you call Elizabeth Anna. Maybe because of the familial resemblance?
-An odd looking woman approaches Elizabeth thinking she is Annabelle. Elizabeth corrects her. The woman is wearing a jumpsuit that doesn't blend in with the rest of the time period.

Booker is Comstock/Future Booker is in Columbia
-You receive a note I believe from a couple. It warns you not to pick 77 in the raffle. Of course, you do anyway and it sets in motion the whole conflict of the game. Someone who knew the future tried to warn you - sounds like a detail that future you would remember, but no one else (including Elizabeth). I also think this couple was hired by future you. They always pop up where you're going.
-In the Hall of Heroes, you find out that Comstock claims to have fought in all of these battles. You know that Compstock was not there, however, because YOU fought in all of these battles.

Possible Timeline:
You save Elizabeth, but she finds herself back in time. She meets the past you and continues your romance there. You have a baby. Future you also goes back in time and goes insane when he realizes Elizabeth is with past you. You try to reach out to her, but she freaks out and hides the baby through a rift. You take her and realize the only way to see her again is to create Columbia (as that is where the baby ends up). This breaks Elizabeth, though, and she dies somehow after being reunited with her baby. This fucks you up and you go crazy studying your daughter to find a way to break the loop where Elizabeth dies. The best way you think is to stop the past you from rescuing Elizabeth (now you're daughter) from Columbia. You lock her away and prepare the city for your coming to keep past you from succeeding. But you show up and succeed anyway and the loop continues with the girl always dying and you always going crazy.

I don't think I have all of that theory right, but that's the jist of it. There are subtler clues as well (like the cage vs flight pendant - are you willing to imprison Elizabeth to end the loop or do you want her to be free). I'll update this as I play the game. I'm sure the details will get clearer as I go. It'll be interesting if I am COMPLETELY wrong. Haha.

UPDATE 1: Well, now they've introduced multiple realities in the game. In some realities things are different. This opens up a whole plethora of ideas of what could be going on. This still works with my theory, as each time the "loop" happens, another dimension is essentially created. However, at one point you go through to another dimension, so I'm not sure how that works if you are supposed to already be in every loop. I guess I'll find out!  

[Zooey]

And now I will never play that game.

[Tbone]

Holy shit, I just finished Bioshock Infinite and it is awesome! Go play it! Everything else I'm posting in spoilers. Highlight to view. Don't read my previous spoiler in my first post or this post if you don't want the game spoiled, and you don't want the game spoiled! Once you beat the game, come back and post in spoiler tags as well and we can have secret discussions!

Super Mega Ultra Endgame Spoilers:

Holy mother fucking shit I called all of the big twists at the beginning of the game and they still blew me away! I can't believe they found a way to make my theory work...what a mind fuck. I'm still processing...

So Elizabeth is your daughter, as I predicted. There's also endless loops, as I predicted. It is less stuck in a time loop, though, and more a loop of alternate realities. Also as I predicted, Booker IS Comstock. That one I guessed way out in left field, so I'm really pleased that that turned out to be the case as well!

So I'm still digesting. This is what I'm getting, though. Basically, after that battle that the Hall of Heroes talks about, Booker attends a baptism. This is where the mega ultra split happens. In half of the realities, Booker rejects the baptism and goes on to be Booker. In the other half of realities, Booker gets baptized and is given a new baptized name, Comstock. From this split Booker/Com do very different things. Booker has a kid and is an investigator. Comstock becomes a religious radical who eventually creates Columbia with the help of a physicist.

This physicist works for Comstock. She discovers the space/time rifts and Comstock uses it to have a child (by taking it from the Booker realities). Booker freely gives over his child to erase a huge debt he's built up (bring us the girl, erase the debt). Comstock is unable to have children himself (or is it Lady Comstock...can't remember). The physicist has a brother who helps her with this project, but feels bad about it and convinces her that they need to try and fix their kidnapping by going back through a rift and fetching Booker, who has been grieving for giving up his child for 20 years. They put him on the raft towards the lighthouse (beginning of the game) and his memory kinda gets borked from the journey.

So Booker tries to save the girl (not knowing its his daughter), but all of this eventually comes full circle (it's an infinite loop of time and realities), so there's no real way to change it. To make matters worse, Elizabeth (to clarify, Booker names her Anna and Comstock renames her Elizabeth) is eventually tweaked to where she goes crazy and attacks NYC in 1984. This is where all the modern references come from, as in part of their loop journey, Elizabeth pulls Booker into 1984 to show him the end result.

The very end shows multiple Elizabeths drowning you, as Booker, as you are being baptized so that all baptized versions of you never become Comstock. Past the end credits, though, it's implied that this didn't really work.

There's no incest (which is good...haha), so I guess Lady Comstock is just a chick you meet as Comstock that you wouldn't meet as Booker. All in all it's pretty confusing and probably deserves a second play through just to try to fill in the details. Luckily I guessed most of this twist early on in the game, so I was looking for these clues to make it work.

[Strod]

Just finished the game.

Read your posts, man you were spot on.

I had my suspicions and i got the majority of it right just from playing and piecing it together.

Spoilers: Man I got instant, INSTANT chills at the end when we revisited Rapture and learned it was an alternate universe. I mean the connection to Andrew/Jack from Dewitt/Comstock is just fucking genius.

Great series.

I FUCKING love the Bioshock series. Games done right.

[Tbone]

Yeah, Strod -

Spoilers: I didn't see Rapture coming at all. There's a debate as to what exactly Elizabeth meant, but it seems to me that Rapture is just an alternate version of Columbia. There are a ton of similarities. This article sums it up pretty well: Spoiler link: don't click!

He makes a good point that you shouldn't be able to operate the bio-submarine (whatever it's called) unless you share the same genetic makeup as Andrew Ryan and clone. It's one of the few games that I'm very tempted to go back and play all over again. I may wait a year or so for the Oculus Rift, though!

[Strod]

Great article, yeah it sums up a lot of the suspicions that come up through out the game.

Spoilers: When he talks about the little sisters having yellow eyes, and thinks they would be blue underneath, I like to agree only because I also think Songbird is this games version of a Big Daddy. The connection I make is, Songbird has the yellow eyes instead of this world's "Little Sister".

I chuckled a bit when Booker made a comment about an underwater city, when the game takes place within the sky.

I would love a definitive answer to the whole Rapture connection and the suggesgted link between Andrew/Dewitt from the vehicles as you said. However, if it's never given I'm ok with that too.

Story telling like this, comes around once in a great while.

I also adore the music and atmosphere of this game, the religious angle just sets the game off.

[Tbone]

I starting putting the pieces together when I wasn't playing the game. I was laying in bed drifting off and just thinking about different elements of the game and then it hit me as to where it could be going. Once I came up with my theory, I had to play non-stop to find out if I was right or not!

[Sared]

Installed and booted up the game maybe...two, three hours ago? Loving it so far. I think I saw your post the pic on FB, but I just found Cunningham Studios!

[Sared]

Super Minor Spoiler: Oh my fucking god, fire mod on the melee is incredibly OP and tons of fun.

[Sared]

[Tbone]

Spoiler: My brother just finished the game, and he said at one point he thought he was Songbird. Haha, so close, yet so far away!

[Tbone]

Also, how have not more of you played and beaten this game by now???

[Strod]

Spoiler: The fact, these guys took a sound from the FIRST damn game, and reused it for a character/npc in the final game which involved that character going BACK to the first game's timeline/universe only to die and shriek that very sound from the first game, to make you go WTF I JUST HEARD SONGBIRD DIE IN THE FIRST GAME, when you replay it. It gives you such a fucking trip, even thought it wasn't always planned, it worked out so god damn brilliantly.

Marry me Bio shock, marry me.

I love Bio Shock.

[Ghisteslwchlohm]

Oh, I totally forgot about this thread by the time I finished Infinite. So I guess I'll spoilers everything I have to say.

Spoiler: I kind of saw most of this stuff coming from fairly early on. When you listen to the Voxophones, the second one you hear in the place asks something to the effect of "When you are baptized, one man goes under and another comes up. What happens to the man who goes under?" In my mind I thought "oh that would be interesting if I turned out to be the "sinner" alternate to the crazy guy running this place." But I like to be surprised so I ignored it.

Something else that I'm not sure if you got it or not T, but the "twins" Robert and Rosalind Lutece, they are actually the same person; merely alternate reality versions, where one is male and the other female.

[Tbone]

Yeah, I got that G, but not until the end.