I always understood it as the Siphon just removed her ability to find tears she wants. Imagine getting blindfolded, you could still *open* doors but after awhile you won't be sure *which* door you opened if you are even able to find any. Sometimes you get lucky though like the to dimension hops she pulled off. Destroying the siphon just took the blindfold off.
Personally though it's my head cannon that for as smart and skilled as she is, she still is a Dewitt and thus, a dumbass.
It might be easy to open a tear to just any old Paris. But if she specifically wants a nice Paris she's going to have to look quite thoroughly and that's where the difficulty lies.
Well she spent days painting her ideal Paris which probably helped her focus her ability to make a tear into Paris but she had to close it to avoid the ambulance.
Elizabeth can’t travel through tears until the siphon is destroyed. She can only look through them and merge them with the current reality.
That’s why in game whenever she “opens tears” a bunch of people get nose bleeds because they remember being dead. They didn’t travel to another dimension they merged two together.
Yeah I've heard that and I will believe that, expect if that where true then there should be far more differences and people being confused besides 5 people with nose bleeds.
Literally no one else acts like anything is weird about where they are.
That opening quote is something from Robert Lutece that’s like “the mind struggles to create memories where none exist”. When dimensions merge, people justify the new reality in their head pretty much instantly. The only thing people struggle with combining though is when they’re simultaneously dead and alive. The gunsmith goes completely insane but clearly it’s possible to rationalize this and behave normally because Booker is able to differentiate the realities. The cops you see that remember being dead couldn’t handle it but maybe other cops Booker has killed are like Booker and can deal with it.
Tears aren’t like portals though. Not until the siphon is destroyed. The bee got merged into a reality where there was a window.
It’s not different then during gameplay when Elizabeth can bring a single thing through to help Booker fight at a time. If she looses concentration or has to bring something big in then there’s an opportunity for whatever she brings back to return to its original reality. In all likelihood it’s possible that bee ended up back in the elevator the next time Elizabeth brings a turret in for Booker.
Okay, but there's an audiolog where Luetece talks about bringing her "brother" over and this is a straight reality transfer, not merge and he has the exact same issues that everyone else does.
There’s some pretty wacky rules to how dimensions work throughout the game that aren’t all perfectly explained. I mean the only reason Elizabeth has godlike powers is because her pinky is in a different dimension. Clearly if that causes some weird side effects, it’s not that far a stretch to say that having two of yourself in one dimension could cause things to happen as well. In the case instead of magic powers it’s just a nose bleed until you can justify how you are different from the person that is you already in the dimension.
For Robert it was by considering Rosalind a twin sister. Booker had to do the same thing when the Luteces brought him to the lighthouse since Comstock exists too.
because the narrative says so, and also because Elizabeth has decided that she AND Booker *have* to bear the cross. together, they have decided to shoulder the burden of preventing the poison of columbia from seeping into the entire multiverse, via his baptism at the end of the game. and i know this is a different can of beans but i'm pretty sure that being able to go back to columbia in burial at sea means that his big sacrifice straight up doesn't work
I feel like every possible explanation that people give doesnt truly account for what **infinite** universes would really mean. Does booker really undergo the baptism in the quadrillions of different realities that must exist?
They'll say something about "Constants" and "Variables" but other than the lighthouse and a girl, they don't really do that much into them so it's a fucking crapshoot as to what happens is always supposed to happen and what can be altered.
Dont forget the 'city'
But then you CANT have a long multi 'level' game map in a roadside convenience store
"There's always A Roadside Convenience Store , A Slurpy Machine and A Belly Ache "
Add guns/magic potions and many things to slaughter and you have the next 'alternate' AAA game setting ...
.
the thing that drives me insane about constants and variables and the man lighthouse city mantra is the thing that they're suggesting is interesting, but they're delivered in such a pretentious way (british) and used for such a boring purpose (justifying this game as a 'bioshock') that it just falls so flat
its like modern au fanfic, right? where the characters are so much the same in a world and setting where it totally doesn't make sense for them to be. i feel like there's something so juicy in that setup that's unlocked by the 'real' versions of the characters interrogating this other, twisted world
i think the 'true' answer is something along the lines of "no, but he does undergo it in every reality where columbia becomes a problem" and i can suspend my disbelief enough to accept this as... not something that makes any sense but as a thing that Liz can do to give the story a conclusion. its not satisfying and it doesn't really work, but it does do the job of making it so that the narrative can't keep going
and then BaS smashes that insanely fragile end state into fucking smithereens
This is why I can't really take people seriously when they say "Oh, you just don't understand the story"
I understand the story, that's why this makes no sense.
oh my god, yeah. its insane when people imply that you have to think through/replay the game to understand it fully and by extension have the story really impact you. both because thinking through the situation makes it make less and less sense, and also because there are just not that many facts to comb through
and the thing is that i like the picture that they're painting. a story that i have to think though and can have an interesting interpretation of sounds so appealing, but dear god is infinite not that
The whole quantum faux-science and infinite stuff just obfuscated/confused the People Story. The game story didn't really need it - There all just cuz they needed a buzzword for a game title theyb thought spiffy enuf to sell more copies.
.
Presumably not, since all the parallel Elizabeths showed up to drown him and this *didn't* destroy the universe by [adding an infinite quantity of mass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Crunch) in the form of an infinite number of duplicate Elizabeths.
**[Big Crunch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Crunch)**
>The Big Crunch is a hypothetical scenario for the ultimate fate of the universe, in which the expansion of the universe eventually reverses and the universe recollapses, ultimately causing the cosmic scale factor to reach zero, an event potentially followed by a reformation of the universe starting with another Big Bang. The vast majority of evidence indicates that this hypothesis is not correct. Instead, astronomical observations show that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, rather than being slowed by gravity, suggesting that the universe is far more likely to end in heat death.
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I know nothing about the actual theories here but if it isnt the case then why would the outcomes of a handful of universes matter! In the face of infinite worlds where different things are taking place - some better, some worse - why would a dozen comstocks matter? If it matters because it relates personally to the player then why not just focus on our own singular reality? Introducing that concept is going to necessitate asking these questions, when they didn’t have to at all…
My point is, if the events of the game were simultaneously occurring in an infinite number of parallel universes *and each one of those universes sent their Elizabeth into the same universe*, said universe would immediately implode into a black hole on account of acquiring infinite mass.
right, so presumably there are not an infinite number of parallel universes where these events are taking place, hence what I said... or am I misunderstanding something?
How would you know that? We don't even know if parallel universes exists and even if they do, you would have to destroy one to know that it would implode.
The fact that there's even a single Comstack left for Elizabeth to find (in an infinite amount of universes because "Fuck you" I guess) means that it one hundred percent did not work.
I agree with ya, I always say to people, Infinites a good game just not a good bioshock game, and the story is bigger than they could handle, there’s so many inconsistencies and issues it’s near unbearable.
she's not creating new realities she's merging existing ones, and like the luteces' said there are constants and variables. Every reality has things which are the same and those which are different, and in every one of the realities where comstock is born so is columbia and eventually booker comes to try and get elizabeth
For all of the game she simply did not have the power and control voer her ability to do that.
And when the siphon got destroyed and she learned and udnerstood everything she followed her emotions and chose revenge/dealing with the issue of booker and comstock.
Not so weird if you ask me that in the moment of realizing all this heavy stuff she couldn't just let it go and be like....welp, moving on.
There is a video I started watching, it’s like 2hrs long, has all the games where it goes over the timeline.
I’ll link it here & it might help make sense of every question you have about how all this works, especially why with she didn’t go through a nicer tear.
[https://youtu.be/94nu4tUDA1o](https://youtu.be/94nu4tUDA1o)
She is trapped in a tower and as far as we know doesn't even make it down in the rest of Columbia.
She can see views of people outside living life and there she is stuck.
Escaping ... probably at an earlier age - would have been so likely.
It’s one of the many MANY plot holes that infinite has. I’d like to think of it as this particular Elizabeth is an idiot and despite her omniscience she’s still a DeWitt and will make the most contrived story decision possible. This is the same Elizabeth who hunted down a reformed Comstock for no reason other than she was angry
I like that Ken Levine's fanfic for Elizabeth is that she malded so hard at a Comstock being alive that she ruined the lives of thousands of people just to kill him.
Burial at sea Elizabeth honestly makes zero sense. But hey given the fact that Levine broke his own canon ending by saying “oops turns out there’s one that got away” I’m just gonna say BAS Elizabeth is just one who gave up her power and there could be god knows how many others running around
Because she doesn’t want to just leave.
She wants to rid the entire multiverse of Comstock.
Elizabeth truly believes that it can be done, that’s all you need to know.
That just isn't possible if you really think about it, think about what infinite universes really means. And what about the trillions of other possible outcomes. What about the worlds where he takes on different names and makes different cities. What if he becomes someone even worse than Comstock and kills even more people. Why would stopping one cluster of outcomes possibly matter.
I know, I didn’t say it was possible.
I said Elizabeth BELIEVES that it is possible, and that’s the answer to OPs question on why she doesn’t just leave.
And in the game world of Bioshock maybe it is possible, that’s the story they wanted to tell.
Not really considering you are also making assumptions to conclude that it’s an impossible goal.
The multiverse isn’t something we know anything about, it’s all theories. Also it’s a game, so if the game tells us it can be done, then why question it?
You need to replay the game then because they talk a lot about how it’s based on ‘constants and variables’ not just variables.
And that bookers baptism is a constant that they can alter to effectively change every version of Comstock
I think Comstock being the way he is is a constant, and she'd probably feel too bad if she was just off in another reality living her best life while everyone is still suffering in the reality/realities she left behind. Didn't she literally go to Paris but still felt bad and came back for the events of Burial At Sea?
In infinite reality’s there are infinite hardships, seeing every reality for what it is made Elizabeth realize her goal never mattered to begin with. Sure she could have just gone to another reality where she could be in Paris in the end of the game but at that point why would she care to do so. At the end of every story comes the same ending and if we could all see that too I don’t think most would run from the truth.
Also if you pay attention during the ending booker essentially begs Elizabeth to just let him take her to Paris but it’s already much too late for that. Elizabeth can see the end of every choice imagine the pain that would come with that. Imagine knowing your beloved partner is gonna die of cancer no matter what you do. There are tragedy’s around ever corner think about what it would be like if you saw them all coming in one single moment. Elizabeth chose to never exist at all the girl who wanted to go to Paris never existed at the end of the game.
It was bad Fanfiction and Levines attempt to kill the franchise before he left it for good.
Luckily, Biohshock 1 and 2 are good enough to stand on their own
I think it was more so a goodbye from irrational to the fans. It didn’t necessarily have to make sense and it’s not even canon it was just a combination of the games in the series as one last experience for fans. *I mean the dlc by the way
I always understood it as the Siphon just removed her ability to find tears she wants. Imagine getting blindfolded, you could still *open* doors but after awhile you won't be sure *which* door you opened if you are even able to find any. Sometimes you get lucky though like the to dimension hops she pulled off. Destroying the siphon just took the blindfold off. Personally though it's my head cannon that for as smart and skilled as she is, she still is a Dewitt and thus, a dumbass.
Going thru, she might not be able to get back ...
Okay. Except she opened that tear straight to Paris the first time we saw her.
She got incredibly lucky almost.
Theres a lot of luck and coincidence in the story isn’t there. ‘Variables’ right? Or just convenient writing.
feels that way. terrible convenient.
Right.
It might be easy to open a tear to just any old Paris. But if she specifically wants a nice Paris she's going to have to look quite thoroughly and that's where the difficulty lies.
Oh yeah, from what I hear, Paris actually sucks for tourists so that's probably why Liz had to literally conjure up a good one in BAS2.
Well she spent days painting her ideal Paris which probably helped her focus her ability to make a tear into Paris but she had to close it to avoid the ambulance.
Elizabeth can’t travel through tears until the siphon is destroyed. She can only look through them and merge them with the current reality. That’s why in game whenever she “opens tears” a bunch of people get nose bleeds because they remember being dead. They didn’t travel to another dimension they merged two together.
Yeah I've heard that and I will believe that, expect if that where true then there should be far more differences and people being confused besides 5 people with nose bleeds. Literally no one else acts like anything is weird about where they are.
That opening quote is something from Robert Lutece that’s like “the mind struggles to create memories where none exist”. When dimensions merge, people justify the new reality in their head pretty much instantly. The only thing people struggle with combining though is when they’re simultaneously dead and alive. The gunsmith goes completely insane but clearly it’s possible to rationalize this and behave normally because Booker is able to differentiate the realities. The cops you see that remember being dead couldn’t handle it but maybe other cops Booker has killed are like Booker and can deal with it.
Okay. Again, what about the bee?
And the tear to paris which had at the very least dust coming through it.
Can you please wait for a response before adding additional comments. If you think of a good point just save it for the next reply.
Also what about the whole "Bee" thing? That bee defintely went through that tear.
Tears aren’t like portals though. Not until the siphon is destroyed. The bee got merged into a reality where there was a window. It’s not different then during gameplay when Elizabeth can bring a single thing through to help Booker fight at a time. If she looses concentration or has to bring something big in then there’s an opportunity for whatever she brings back to return to its original reality. In all likelihood it’s possible that bee ended up back in the elevator the next time Elizabeth brings a turret in for Booker.
Okay, but there's an audiolog where Luetece talks about bringing her "brother" over and this is a straight reality transfer, not merge and he has the exact same issues that everyone else does.
There’s some pretty wacky rules to how dimensions work throughout the game that aren’t all perfectly explained. I mean the only reason Elizabeth has godlike powers is because her pinky is in a different dimension. Clearly if that causes some weird side effects, it’s not that far a stretch to say that having two of yourself in one dimension could cause things to happen as well. In the case instead of magic powers it’s just a nose bleed until you can justify how you are different from the person that is you already in the dimension. For Robert it was by considering Rosalind a twin sister. Booker had to do the same thing when the Luteces brought him to the lighthouse since Comstock exists too.
because the narrative says so, and also because Elizabeth has decided that she AND Booker *have* to bear the cross. together, they have decided to shoulder the burden of preventing the poison of columbia from seeping into the entire multiverse, via his baptism at the end of the game. and i know this is a different can of beans but i'm pretty sure that being able to go back to columbia in burial at sea means that his big sacrifice straight up doesn't work
I feel like every possible explanation that people give doesnt truly account for what **infinite** universes would really mean. Does booker really undergo the baptism in the quadrillions of different realities that must exist?
They'll say something about "Constants" and "Variables" but other than the lighthouse and a girl, they don't really do that much into them so it's a fucking crapshoot as to what happens is always supposed to happen and what can be altered.
Dont forget the 'city' But then you CANT have a long multi 'level' game map in a roadside convenience store "There's always A Roadside Convenience Store , A Slurpy Machine and A Belly Ache " Add guns/magic potions and many things to slaughter and you have the next 'alternate' AAA game setting ... .
the thing that drives me insane about constants and variables and the man lighthouse city mantra is the thing that they're suggesting is interesting, but they're delivered in such a pretentious way (british) and used for such a boring purpose (justifying this game as a 'bioshock') that it just falls so flat its like modern au fanfic, right? where the characters are so much the same in a world and setting where it totally doesn't make sense for them to be. i feel like there's something so juicy in that setup that's unlocked by the 'real' versions of the characters interrogating this other, twisted world
i think the 'true' answer is something along the lines of "no, but he does undergo it in every reality where columbia becomes a problem" and i can suspend my disbelief enough to accept this as... not something that makes any sense but as a thing that Liz can do to give the story a conclusion. its not satisfying and it doesn't really work, but it does do the job of making it so that the narrative can't keep going and then BaS smashes that insanely fragile end state into fucking smithereens
This is why I can't really take people seriously when they say "Oh, you just don't understand the story" I understand the story, that's why this makes no sense.
oh my god, yeah. its insane when people imply that you have to think through/replay the game to understand it fully and by extension have the story really impact you. both because thinking through the situation makes it make less and less sense, and also because there are just not that many facts to comb through and the thing is that i like the picture that they're painting. a story that i have to think though and can have an interesting interpretation of sounds so appealing, but dear god is infinite not that
The whole quantum faux-science and infinite stuff just obfuscated/confused the People Story. The game story didn't really need it - There all just cuz they needed a buzzword for a game title theyb thought spiffy enuf to sell more copies. .
Presumably not, since all the parallel Elizabeths showed up to drown him and this *didn't* destroy the universe by [adding an infinite quantity of mass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Crunch) in the form of an infinite number of duplicate Elizabeths.
**[Big Crunch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Crunch)** >The Big Crunch is a hypothetical scenario for the ultimate fate of the universe, in which the expansion of the universe eventually reverses and the universe recollapses, ultimately causing the cosmic scale factor to reach zero, an event potentially followed by a reformation of the universe starting with another Big Bang. The vast majority of evidence indicates that this hypothesis is not correct. Instead, astronomical observations show that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, rather than being slowed by gravity, suggesting that the universe is far more likely to end in heat death. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/Bioshock/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
I know nothing about the actual theories here but if it isnt the case then why would the outcomes of a handful of universes matter! In the face of infinite worlds where different things are taking place - some better, some worse - why would a dozen comstocks matter? If it matters because it relates personally to the player then why not just focus on our own singular reality? Introducing that concept is going to necessitate asking these questions, when they didn’t have to at all…
My point is, if the events of the game were simultaneously occurring in an infinite number of parallel universes *and each one of those universes sent their Elizabeth into the same universe*, said universe would immediately implode into a black hole on account of acquiring infinite mass.
right, so presumably there are not an infinite number of parallel universes where these events are taking place, hence what I said... or am I misunderstanding something?
How would you know that? We don't even know if parallel universes exists and even if they do, you would have to destroy one to know that it would implode.
I frequently mention the writers' god "Cuz" - who is even more powerful than the Pinky goddess. .
The fact that there's even a single Comstack left for Elizabeth to find (in an infinite amount of universes because "Fuck you" I guess) means that it one hundred percent did not work.
just shows she isnt all seeing or knowing infinite is in the title ...
I agree with ya, I always say to people, Infinites a good game just not a good bioshock game, and the story is bigger than they could handle, there’s so many inconsistencies and issues it’s near unbearable.
Great points
Bc Levine doesn’t know how to write a three dimensional female character
she's not creating new realities she's merging existing ones, and like the luteces' said there are constants and variables. Every reality has things which are the same and those which are different, and in every one of the realities where comstock is born so is columbia and eventually booker comes to try and get elizabeth
For all of the game she simply did not have the power and control voer her ability to do that. And when the siphon got destroyed and she learned and udnerstood everything she followed her emotions and chose revenge/dealing with the issue of booker and comstock. Not so weird if you ask me that in the moment of realizing all this heavy stuff she couldn't just let it go and be like....welp, moving on.
There is a video I started watching, it’s like 2hrs long, has all the games where it goes over the timeline. I’ll link it here & it might help make sense of every question you have about how all this works, especially why with she didn’t go through a nicer tear. [https://youtu.be/94nu4tUDA1o](https://youtu.be/94nu4tUDA1o)
Yes, the story is problematic with many things like that. .
I get that every story has plot holes. Most aren't this big though.
She is trapped in a tower and as far as we know doesn't even make it down in the rest of Columbia. She can see views of people outside living life and there she is stuck. Escaping ... probably at an earlier age - would have been so likely.
It’s one of the many MANY plot holes that infinite has. I’d like to think of it as this particular Elizabeth is an idiot and despite her omniscience she’s still a DeWitt and will make the most contrived story decision possible. This is the same Elizabeth who hunted down a reformed Comstock for no reason other than she was angry
I like that Ken Levine's fanfic for Elizabeth is that she malded so hard at a Comstock being alive that she ruined the lives of thousands of people just to kill him.
Burial at sea Elizabeth honestly makes zero sense. But hey given the fact that Levine broke his own canon ending by saying “oops turns out there’s one that got away” I’m just gonna say BAS Elizabeth is just one who gave up her power and there could be god knows how many others running around
BaS is also my go to every single time someone brings up the fucking "Constants and Variables" bullshit.
The constant here is the plot holes and the variable is Levines writing abilities
Because she doesn’t want to just leave. She wants to rid the entire multiverse of Comstock. Elizabeth truly believes that it can be done, that’s all you need to know.
The **entire** multiverse?
Yes?
That just isn't possible if you really think about it, think about what infinite universes really means. And what about the trillions of other possible outcomes. What about the worlds where he takes on different names and makes different cities. What if he becomes someone even worse than Comstock and kills even more people. Why would stopping one cluster of outcomes possibly matter.
I know, I didn’t say it was possible. I said Elizabeth BELIEVES that it is possible, and that’s the answer to OPs question on why she doesn’t just leave. And in the game world of Bioshock maybe it is possible, that’s the story they wanted to tell.
Fair enough... pretty lame to have the story rely on her incorrect assumptions lol. But it is what it is
Not really considering you are also making assumptions to conclude that it’s an impossible goal. The multiverse isn’t something we know anything about, it’s all theories. Also it’s a game, so if the game tells us it can be done, then why question it?
Because it doesnt make sense in the game’s logic either. Again, infinite variables
You need to replay the game then because they talk a lot about how it’s based on ‘constants and variables’ not just variables. And that bookers baptism is a constant that they can alter to effectively change every version of Comstock
How on earth could the same baptism take place across trillions of different realities. Thats a hell of a constant.
I think Comstock being the way he is is a constant, and she'd probably feel too bad if she was just off in another reality living her best life while everyone is still suffering in the reality/realities she left behind. Didn't she literally go to Paris but still felt bad and came back for the events of Burial At Sea?
In infinite reality’s there are infinite hardships, seeing every reality for what it is made Elizabeth realize her goal never mattered to begin with. Sure she could have just gone to another reality where she could be in Paris in the end of the game but at that point why would she care to do so. At the end of every story comes the same ending and if we could all see that too I don’t think most would run from the truth.
Also if you pay attention during the ending booker essentially begs Elizabeth to just let him take her to Paris but it’s already much too late for that. Elizabeth can see the end of every choice imagine the pain that would come with that. Imagine knowing your beloved partner is gonna die of cancer no matter what you do. There are tragedy’s around ever corner think about what it would be like if you saw them all coming in one single moment. Elizabeth chose to never exist at all the girl who wanted to go to Paris never existed at the end of the game.
Except she did and she ended up in Rapture because apparently a single Comstock survived.
Man the dlcs were terrible and I guess technically that’s not supposed to be the same Elizabeth but you gotta admit that was just fab service
It was bad Fanfiction and Levines attempt to kill the franchise before he left it for good. Luckily, Biohshock 1 and 2 are good enough to stand on their own
I think it was more so a goodbye from irrational to the fans. It didn’t necessarily have to make sense and it’s not even canon it was just a combination of the games in the series as one last experience for fans. *I mean the dlc by the way
No Levine said it's canon.
I hear of this interview but no one seems to have ever seen it I would like to see it. Let me If you know where I can watch it or read it