Bioshock Infinite, an ending that hits me...

This is my first note discussing video games of any sort. I am not your usual video game enthusiast or "gamer", I play games to release and escape. I play them to release frustrations that come home with me from work and escape to a place where i can develop elsewhere. I do not enjoy the shoot em up games like i used to, instead i play games where there is a story to be told. A plot to be revealed or just a world to exist in.

I will of course be talking about others but first, one storyline has stood out above all others and you should know which storyline it is if you have seen the title. Bioshock Infinite.


For those that have played through this tale of racism, reform and repent you know how the story ends. For those that have not...Spoilers. SPOILERS. SPOILERS!!


So you get the whole picture, this is a story, of which takes place in 1912, of a man, Booker Dewitt, who is assigned to find a girl. He is promised a clean slate from debt collectors back in New York city as payment should he bring her back. Simple enough, right? No. The girl you seek is located in a floating city that spans somewhere above the Eastern shore of the U.S.. You gain access by way of a lighthouse off the coast of Maine. Once you get to the city the girl, you find out is protected by a giant half mechanical song bird and it keeps watch over her in her tower, which is a statue of a giant angel.

Sorry, I forgot that almost everyone in the floating city is a religious zealot and racist. The people of the city are led by a super bible nut named Comstock.


Once you free the damsel from her tower she shows you her powers that can rip holes in your dimension and open up portals to others. All this poor girl, now known as Elizabeth Comstock, wants to do is be free and go to Paris but instead she stuck with you, Booker Dewitt.


Sooo... you agree to help her get to Paris if she comes with you all the while knowing you plan is ultimately to give her up in NYC to clear your debt, real dirt bag move. She finds out and runs away, you find her and now since everyone is trying to kill you for taking her, the people believe she is some sort of lamb that will lead them to salvation, and there is also a civil war taking place between the racist whites, founders, of the city and those below them, Vox Populi. So again, she is stuck with you as you fight your way through the city in all efforts to escape. You never escape. In fact.. after you fight and kill and even go through some real haunting stuff, a truth is told.


This truth was tough to take in because you grew, I mean REALLY grew to like these two characters. You find out that Elizabeth is your daughter, Anna Dewitt. You gave her up when she was a baby, you heartless bastard Booker, to cover some gambling debt. Comstock raised her as his own and renamed her Elizabeth.



At this point I was already torn up. I myself had a baby girl on the way and this hit home. But it goes even deeper! He realizes he's an idiot and he rushes after them because he realizes he can fix this and that he is the only one that will raise his daughter. He's going to change and become a better person and protect her from the evils of the world. Booker gets to the portal just as they are stepping through and you see baby Anna reaching for her father, the one who she loves and believes will protect her, and the portal closes on them not before severing the pinky off baby Anna.



Boom, that was it for me. I was blown away at this point. Maybe it was the timing or the context of the situation but I was deeply affected by this story twist. I would never let anything happen to our daughter. I would never give her up no matter how hard things got.



So you lose her to this nut job Zachary Comstock in an alternate universe that is not your own. The alternate universe part is very important. You find out a little later that you are in fact Zachary Comstock, the religious nut job. You are his alternate self that accepted a baptism after the Battle of Wounded Knee. So you are summoned by the very people, minus Comstock, that you gave your daughter to in an attempt to save her. This was attempted 122 other times and you are the 123rd attempt.



In the end you sort of succeed and in order to end the craziness that continues to ensue, Elizabeth must kill you. She must kill her own father, the man that just rescued from the other crazy version of himself on the 123rd attempt. This must be done in order for her to live in peace.



The story is so magnificent that you can't help but get sucked up in all of it. If you had yet to play any of the Bioshock series games, treat yourself. The original is going on over ten years old at this point and I am still going through the original story of Rapture, the Utopian city under the sea. And under the same lighthouse, or is it?


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