Bioshock Infinite Ending **Spoilers **Spoilers **Spoilers and it may contain **Spoilers Explained

I agree with Yahtzee.  Quantum and dimensional stories are tricky.  Unless written well, you run the risk of creating circular logic…with no beginning and end.  As Yahtzee put it “You run the risk of disappearing up your own ass”.  

 

 

Ok…there are many different dimensions but both Booker and Comstock are the same person.  (Did I mention SPOILERS?) 

This could make your head hurt so just bear with me.   I refer to them independently because Comstock comes from a reality where he is a sterile racist prick (and 20 years older than Booker).  Since Comstock can't have a child, he goes into another reality and makes a deal for Anna Dewitt (AD), Booker's baby girl, through a third party (those wacky scientists) to wipe out Booker's debt.   20 years later, Booker is in debt again.  He's told to "Find the girl" to wipe out his debt and is taken to a lighthouse where there is an elevator that goes Waaaaaaay up!  Finding himself in the cloud city of Columbia.

 

Comstock is also spiritual and de facto ruler of Columbia (somehow).   Despite him being the kind of cartoon villain that all other cartoon villains would point at and go "Phhhhht...what's with that guy?".  At the end,  there is an intersection in time where all versions of Booker will either become a drunk who would sell his daughter for a buck or a racist maniacal spiritual leader.  If he becomes a leader, a lot of people will die (despite him knowing this and to preach equality instead of racial hatred)  So his last act as a hero...before becoming a total douche...is to allow himself to be drowned.  Since this incident happened physically before Anna was born, She ceases to exist...across all realities.  As endings go, it was pretty lame. 
 
It was like:
     "I'm going to kill Comstock when he was younger - he sucks"
     "You ARE Comstock when he was younger"
     "Then I'm going to kill myself"
Blubblublublbub

Seriously?  You know the game was awesome!  It had variation....it had vigors (plasmids) which you could selectively upgrade and combination for vigors (like a combination attack)... you could upgrade your favorite firearm (but never all).   You could swing along the rail system like a high speed roller coaster and perform arial attacks on ground targets.  You have a shield that recharges but your health doesn't that easily.  There are upgrades to your health, shields and Salt (vigor) levels.  The story compells you forward.  Music...there was a ragtime version of 'Tainted Love' (must hear)...a barbershop quartet version of "God only knows" by the Beachboys ... many others as well.   Visually spectacular set in 1912...the look and feel is just amazing.

Despite all the high flying action of this game, the ending was an "I might suck so kill me now" and it doesn't work with the flow.   Sort of like being at the fair and you have won at all the carny games... went on a bunch of the rides...your girl is looking pretty against the neon lights as you indulge on cotton candy and caramel apples...and just when you are thinking you are having the best day of your life, you wake up finding half a cockroach in your mouth.

Here is my problem with the ending:

 Assuming Booker in the water is connected to all Bookers who would sacrifice themselves for the greater good.   You are actually ensuring more that Comstock will come to be (as a jerk that is).   Assuming endless possibilities, there could be a Booker scratching his balls and watching baseball in Chicago that would not be part of this water party.  Following that to its logical conclusion, where ever there was even a slight difference, there would be NO intersection  (How could there be?).   The Booker that would be Comstock would have declined sacrificing himself.   In fact each second isn't the exact duplicate of every other second.  Alternate realities would be as different as snowflakes.  He isn't beside himself as a younger man.  He didn't show up 20 years in his future INSIDE Comstock!   The writer did cleverly use the term 'Reality' as opposed to 'Dimension'.  It was also mentioned that Elizabeth/Anna could 'Modify' reality to the point where she could create stuff out of thin air that never was - under the natural order of things. 

 
The writer used Quantum and dimensional devices to create the feel of a good story .   It looks good and it creates an interesting feel...but the tools are obviously not used to their potential.  Much like a child that makes a mud pie and then puts chocolate icing on it; It looks like a chocolate cake...and if you taste the surface...it tastes like a chocolate cake...but if you take a bite, you've got a mouthful of dirt. 
 
  This is what happens when you have linear thinkers trying to make a non-linear story;  The sky looks distinctively like a sky texture would from the inside of a box.  The game was great!  The ending was so far up it's own ass that it simply vanished from this reality.
 
So here's my ending:  Booker grows up to be Comstock and preaches equality and insists on fair working conditions and wages.  No Vox.  No trouble.   Knowing the kind of trouble his bad decisions would have caused, he wises up...like people do.