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Bioshock Infinite is often heralded as one of the most ambitious games of its generation. Released in 2013, it captured the imagination of gamers with its vibrant, floating city of Columbia, its richly detailed world-building, and its commentary on American exceptionalism, racism, and religion. For the better part of the game, players are swept up in a mesmerizing story of revolution, oppressive ideologies, and the relationship between the protagonist, Booker DeWitt, and Elizabeth, the mysterious young woman he’s tasked with saving. But all of this goodwill is completely undone by the game’s convoluted, bloated, and utterly disappointing ending.
To call the ending of Bioshock Infinite frustrating would be an understatement. It’s the kind of narrative conclusion that makes you question the journey you just experienced. Not because it’s profound or thought-provoking, but because it’s a tangled mess of pseudo-intellectual nonsense that prioritizes shock value over coherence. In the following review, I’ll delve into exactly why the ending of Bioshock Infinite is not just bad, but actively harmful to the game as a whole.
1. A Narrative Collapse: When Ambition Outpaces Execution
Bioshock Infinite’s story sets up a fascinating premise: Booker DeWitt, a man haunted by his past, is hired to retrieve a young woman named Elizabeth from the floating city of Columbia. Along the way, he becomes embroiled in the city’s violent class struggle and uncovers the dark secrets of its founder, Comstock. The setup is excellent, drawing players into a world rich with mystery and intrigue. However, as the story progresses, it begins to strain under the weight of its own ambitions.
The ending introduces a multiverse concept that attempts to tie together all the events of the game (and retroactively the entire Bioshock series). It’s a bold move, but one that falls flat because it lacks the narrative discipline to make sense. Instead of providing clarity, the game inundates players with exposition dumps, nonsensical twists, and a barrage of new rules about how the multiverse operates—all crammed into the last hour of gameplay. It’s as if the writers decided to abandon the themes and character arcs they had painstakingly built up in favor of a convoluted spectacle that feels entirely detached from the rest of the game.
2. The Elizabeth Problem: A Character Undone
Elizabeth is, without question, one of the best parts of Bioshock Infinite. Her character design, voice acting, and AI behavior make her a compelling and likable companion throughout most of the game. She’s smart, resourceful, and deeply human, with her own hopes, fears, and agency. However, the ending effectively reduces her to a plot device.
By the time the multiverse reveal comes into play, Elizabeth’s character arc is sidelined in favor of making her a mouthpiece for the game’s increasingly convoluted lore. Her motivations and emotional journey take a backseat to endless explanations about lighthouses, doors, and the nature of parallel universes. This is particularly infuriating because Elizabeth starts the game as such a strong and relatable character. Watching her be reduced to a deus ex machina is both heartbreaking and infuriating.
3. The “Booker Is Comstock” Twist: Predictable and Pointless
The revelation that Booker and Comstock are the same person in different timelines is meant to be the emotional and narrative climax of the game. Instead, it lands with a resounding thud. For one thing, it’s not particularly surprising. The game lays down heavy-handed clues throughout the story, to the point where the twist feels more like a formality than a genuine revelation. Worse, it undermines the entire conflict between Booker and Comstock. Rather than being a clash of ideologies or moral perspectives, it becomes a fight against a villain who is literally just an alternate version of the protagonist.
This twist also retroactively diminishes the stakes of the game. If Booker and Comstock are the same person, then the game’s central struggle is essentially meaningless. The revolution in Columbia, the oppression of its citizens, and Elizabeth’s imprisonment all become secondary to the game’s fixation on this one twist. It’s a narrative choice that feels cheap and self-indulgent, as if the writers were more interested in shocking the player than telling a coherent story.
4. The Ending’s Contradictions
Bioshock Infinite’s ending is riddled with logical inconsistencies that make it nearly impossible to take seriously. For example, the idea that drowning Booker at the moment of his baptism will erase Comstock from existence doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. If Comstock never existed, then the events of the game should never have happened. But if the events of the game never happened, then how could Elizabeth have been there to drown Booker in the first place? It’s a paradox that the game doesn’t bother to address, and it’s emblematic of the lazy writing that plagues the ending.
The game also contradicts its own rules about the multiverse. Early on, the story establishes that every choice creates a new timeline, and that all timelines exist simultaneously. If that’s the case, then eliminating one version of Booker shouldn’t have any effect on the other timelines. The game asks players to accept its logic without providing a coherent framework to understand it. Instead of feeling profound, the ending comes across as a cheap attempt to appear deep and philosophical.
5. A Betrayal of Themes
One of the most frustrating aspects of the ending is how it betrays the themes that the game had been exploring up until that point. Bioshock Infinite spends much of its runtime grappling with issues of power, control, and the consequences of ideology. It examines the dangers of blind faith, the corrupting influence of power, and the ways in which systemic oppression perpetuates itself. These are compelling themes that resonate throughout the game’s world and characters.
But the ending abandons these themes in favor of a shallow meditation on the nature of choice and identity. By reducing the game’s conflict to a single man’s decision at a baptism, the writers effectively erase the broader social and political commentary that made Columbia such a fascinating setting. It’s a betrayal of the game’s own narrative foundation, and it leaves players feeling like they wasted their time engaging with the story’s deeper themes.
6. The Lighthouses: A Symbol of Missed Potential
The lighthouse scene is one of the most iconic moments in Bioshock Infinite, but it’s also one of the most infuriating. As Elizabeth explains the nature of the multiverse, players are shown an endless sea of lighthouses, each representing a different timeline. It’s a visually stunning sequence, but it ultimately amounts to little more than empty spectacle. The game uses the lighthouses as a metaphor for infinite possibilities, but it fails to explore those possibilities in any meaningful way. Instead, it reduces the concept of the multiverse to a series of vague and repetitive imagery that adds nothing to the story.
7. A Legacy Tarnished
Perhaps the most damning aspect of Bioshock Infinite’s ending is the way it tarnishes the legacy of the series. The original Bioshock is celebrated for its tight storytelling, memorable characters, and thought-provoking themes. While Infinite initially seems poised to continue that tradition, its ending undermines everything that came before it. By retroactively tying the series together through the multiverse, the game diminishes the impact of the original Bioshock’s story. What was once a self-contained narrative with a clear message about free will and control is now tangled up in a mess of alternate timelines and contradictory rules.
Conclusion: A Stunning Failure
Bioshock Infinite is a game that could have been great. It has all the ingredients of a masterpiece: a stunning setting, compelling characters, and a story that