It is nearly 24 hours since I completed the newest Bioshock, and I have very mixed thoughts about ending. Right after beating it I sat in front of my monitor for a good few hours browsing Bioshock Wiki because the game left me with one big question:
If there are millions of other Comstocks, are there millions of Bookers, Annas/Elizabeths and Columbias as well?
Let me explain. You are playing as one Booker DeWitt. When Elizabeth tells you that there are millions of Comstocks and killing one makes no difference, how “killing” one Booker DeWitt affects the other ones in other dimensions? I don’t think it can change anything but the one affected by it. This may be backed by the fact that when Lutece couple tells you to flip a coin there is 122 “heads” on board and you add one more. This indicates that other Bookers from other dimensions were there before but failed to achieve their goal. When you travel through the tear with Elizabeth to the other dimension you can find vox recordings of other Booker’s who are already dead. This means that other worlds are not affecting each other directly. Maybe not at all.
In your ending you are not accepting Baptism nor refusing it so there is no Booker as we know him and there is no Comstock either. The game doesn’t tell you if you died. In the credits there is a short scene where you as a Booker enter a room with a crib calling for Anna, but there is no evidence of her being or not being there. So the ending is open for discussion.
From what I found you are just experiencing one of many possible ways of Booker’s life and others could be similar or completely different. Yes they are bound together by same characters but that is all.
