New Bioshock: Infinite - Page 31

As chillax said, it was a result of him finding religion. He thought of himself as reborn after his worst crimes, and that gave him license in his mind to be even worse in many ways. Despite his atrocities, he felt himself a better man now then his peers, and he was able to actually put that idea to the test when he met Rosalind Lutece and the went to work on a floating city. When he started seeing the tears as religious visions confirming his world view rather than just as a window into what such a world view would ultimately result in, it only made him worse.

You have to consider the time period and location when you take into account the racist elements in particular. It was still too normal for there to be such heavy discrimination, often just as bad in the US as it was in Columbia. Booker, like many of that time, clearly had it in him to become such a megalomaniac racist, but circumstances only allowed that to shine when he got the power of his religious position and the floating city behind him. Kind of a nature vs nurture argument, was he really a crazy racist deep down, or was it just circumstances that made him into one? They give the player agency to decide which of those arguments holds more true, because they never made an overt effort to paint player-Booker one way or another (outside of the choices they offer you like throwing the baseball).

On an additional note, his sterility was not a cause for his insanity, but a result of it. In addition to his advanced aged appearance, the sterility was caused by his exposure to the quantum mechanics-based machinery of the floating city and reality tears. Whether that exacerbated his apparent insanity at that point is up for debate, it did after all cause him to think stealing his own child from an alternate reality was a good idea, lol.

The racism thing was because that's how every religious person in the 1800s was. I'm pretty sure that's how the bible read back then as well. Whites were "God's chosen" and everyone else wasn't. Of course it was a ridiculous notion, but that's how it was. The game stayed true to the times. Comstock found religion and thus created a nation based on combining religion with politics(which is considered a no no). When America decided to change its ways, Comstock decided to split away from America and continue what was ultimately going on. Obviously, a lot of it is hyperbole.

Comstock stole his daughter because he read a prophecy/was visited by an archangel saying a child only from his bloodline would take his place and bring ruin to America. Basically cleanse it by fire, which is what you see the elderly Elizabeth do before she sends you back in time to prevent it from happening. Since he was sterile due to universe-traveling, he had to find a way to get a child directly from his bloodline which is what he did when he found Booker. There's actually a lot of explaining if you view all the slideshows/listen to every tape recording/pay close attention to the dialogue.

Booker on the other hand was the non-religious opposite. He was indifferent because he refused to be baptized and thus never took religion seriously like Comstock did.

The Fink/Fitzroy overthrow was a way to introduce the different timelines/worlds/universes and I personally felt they did a good job with it. I agree it felt kind of silly for it to go from "I'm fighting Comstock's men" to "Revolution" to "I'm fighting Fitzroy's men" but I can't say I agree this part of the storyline felt glossed over.

He was offended by America when they wanted to call Columbia back in after the Chinese battle that they interfered in. He saw a tear that showed Columbia 'raining fire on the mountains of man', but it would only come true if he his blood remained on the throne.

Simply put, popular belief in the US back then was that the Mark of Cain = dark skin. An example being that the Southern Baptist groups used this as justification for slavery.

Yeah, America was on a trend AWAY from what Columbia's ideal was, so it only made sense for Comstock to want to separate at that point. I'm still unsure if Comstock ever actually saw any visions/hallucinations of his own (if not, who is the archangel he refers to? future Elizabeth?), it seems like everything he saw could be explained by tears as we saw later that the future of raining fire had plenty of propaganda in it to prove to Comstock it was his daughter leading the destruction.

And yeah, that tear is the reason why he felt he had to steal his alternate-daughter, but that doesn't make him any less insane for feeling justified in doing so. Like I said, those vision-tears just exacerbated his level of insanity and how far he would be willing to go.

Am I the only one who thinks that the archangel Comstock always refers to is actually Lutece? I mean, he keeps saying "as the archangel showed me". It was Lutece who invented the whole dimensional travel thing, so I figured he may be referring to her.

My problem with that theory is that he would have recognized both of them. I'd say it's more likely future-Elizabeth, as he wouldn't recognize the similarities with the newly acquired baby until much later, but that has its holes as well. This is one of the more interesting things still missing, imo, assuming it's not something more simple like a hallucination his brain has made up to make the tears make sense.

To me he was not a true prophet, his visions were simply from Lutece's tears into the future/side worlds.

The old Elizabeth told us that he was a hell of a fortune teller, so yeah. Comstock uses Lutece's tears to his prophecies

Even got the image :
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Can someone explain to me how come Comstock needed to steal the baby from the player's Booker? If they are the same person, shouldn't Comstock have the exact same baby in his universe, and not need to go into another universe to steal the baby? And how was he able to go between universes if he never had Anna/Elizabeth in the first place?

In some worlds, Booker is baptised into Comstock. He becomes wealthy and comes into contact with Rosalind Lutece, whose work with quantum mechanics puts Columbia in the sky. Her works also involve crossing over timelines and alternate worlds, allowing him to become 'the prophet' and giving him the prophecy stating that Columbia will last as long as his bloodline stays on the throne. However, Comstock becomes infertile due to the exposure to this machinery, so he asks Rosalind Lutele to stepover into an alternate universe where Booker was never baptised into Comstock to ask for Booker's daughter in return for clearing Booker's gambling debts. In this universe she also comes across her twin 'with one chromosome difference', the male Lutece, who acts as the messenger between Comstock and Booker. Booker accepts the deal. During the handover into Comstock's world, Booker changes his mind and grabs at Anna, resulting in the missing fingertip, but she passes into Comstock's world anyway, along with Comstock and the male Lutece. She is then locked into the tower where Comstock keeps a watchful eye on her. All her special talents regarding crossing over worlds is theorised by the Lutele siblings to be due to part of her body (her fingertip) being stuck in her original world.

To destroy any evidence that Elizabeth is not Comstock's true daughter, he has his wife and the Lutele siblings killed. The Lutele siblings do not completely die, but are instead scattered across time and space due to their exposure during their work.

Years later, the Lutele siblings feel regret and offer Booker the chance to cross worlds to meet Anna/Elizabeth again. When crossing over into Comstock's world, his mind gets addled in the process. He forgets about his past (the daughter) and mixes his new objective with his earlier bargain of getting the girl to clear his debts.

At the end of the game, the tower is destroyed and all the restrictions on Elizabeth's power are lifted. She is finally able to peer into ALL the alternate worlds, crossing them at will. She then realises that Booker = Comstock, and although Comstock is dead in this world, the events are still proceeding as normal in many other alternate universes. She tells Booker that Comstock is still alive, asking if Booker is completely committed to ending the chain by killing Comstock at his 'birth'. Booker still has not realised that Comstock is just himself reborn, and commits to it. He walks into the scene of Wounded Knee, where he had just previously refused baptism (and forgiveness for his past sins). He finally realises the truth, at which point several other Elizabeths appear, showing just how many of them have suffered due to his transition into Comstock. They smother him in the water and he dies without resisting; the chain is broken and the other Elizabeths disappear.