IPunchWithMyFists said:
The only reason for the ending twist, also, is either two-fold. 1. The notion that a religious creed (the baptism) can-and-will turn a man into a racist, greedy, evil and self-righteous scumbag or 2. Sloppy writing that assumes we will believe that a (somewhat) arbitrary point in a man's life will literally change the man he becomes? Either way I found myself incredibly offended.
Though, again, this is all my opinion. People have read my opinions on games as personal attacks WAYYY too many times. Not that I'm assuming.
I have to disagree. I felt the whole baptism plot point was incredibly moving and well done. I'm not even anti-religious and I certinaly had no love for comstock, but to me it worked as a very clear symbolic point for brooker/comstock. Obviously Brooker was deeply regretful for the actrocity he took part in at wounded knee, so much that he went to the baptism in hopes of forgiveness and absolution.
And his reaction is telling. The man who became the brooker we saw was the man who realized that being dunked in the water doesn't change him or wash away his sins. It's just something he has to face. Unfortunatly, this man still ended up deeply in debt(look at his apartment in 1893? It's completely bare except for a matress on a bedframe, a few racing stubs and a few bottles of booze). His wife died in childbirth, leaving him as a single father(and something tells me he was not up the task). Then he did something he would regret even further. He sold his daugther to pay the debt off. Which destroyed his life even more, so much that he never forgave himself for that either, and became a pinkerton agent. And somehow, managed to get kicked out of the pinkertons(presumably for excessive methods, which is saying a lot considering the kind of stuff they used to pull). The brooker who arrives in Columbia is understandably cold and fairly damaged from all of this. This is one side of him.
The man who became comstock took the baptism, and embraced it. Believing he was saved and absolved, he became a fundamentalist, so much so that he believed that he saw an archangel who showed him the idea for columbia. He created his own eden, run by his rules and beliefs, with no room for anyone but his perfect followers(at least to be treated as people), because he was convinced of his own rightousness(probably because if he didn't, he'd have to deal with what he did at wounded knee). Furthermore, he locks his own child up in a tower for 17 years, with plans that someday, she would purify the rest of the world(sodom) with fire. Oh, and murders his wife, as well as numerous others and blames it on his housekeeper.(unless I remember that plot point wrong).
Bioshock Infinite shows us two aspects of brookers darkside. The horrible father who sells his child and becomes a thug, and the horrible father who locks his child in a tower for 17 years, murders his wife. Brooker really isn't a good person either way, but for the purposes of gameplay and the alternate universes idea, the baptism was used as the point of divergence for the two brookers. I'm sure that there were probably universes out there where brooker ended up dealing with his guilt in a constructive matter, but then again, that brooker would not have ever needed or gone to Columbia in the first place.
