Sarge034 said:
Ugh... I thought I stopped talking about this shitty game's plot long ago... Why did this DLC rope me back into talking about it?
Screw all the rest I am merely going to focus on the technicalities of their version of the multiple worlds theory.
The other constants would be turrets and cake. Both universes have cake so those are now constants. It's a weak flimsy way of justifying the plot and not actually having to explain why their universes work the same. It's meant to stuff under the rug that everything you do is at least a dichotomous choice and that the plot is essentially ignoring it's own set rules to make things happen.
You only have to look at how they make the city float to understand exactly how little thought went into this from the angle of the sciences.
We have a suspended particle in an air balloon right? Gravity has no effect on it. They literally state that word for word. It is a particle literally suspended between universes so no force in either universe can move it seeing as half of it is in a different universe. Now we will gloss over the fact that this doesn't lead to a nuclear fissure as the dimensional gate snaps it in half like it would do to a finger but now you are basically sitting on a gigantic immovable atom bomb.
Yet... we see the city parts flying around? What? They just established that gravity has no effect on it, gravity being nothing else but a force. So we can conclude that exerting force on it leads to nothing. Yet they can move around with rockets like they are a bunch of air balloons? That should not happen. The air balloon is nothing else but a force exerted on it from one universe You should have an immobile suspended city floating on immobile suspended gas particles in one universe and a bunch of floating immovable particles that are making airplanes crash as they run into them in another universe.
They did not think when writing this. This is techno-babble to explain things in a way that makes it look smart whilst it really isn't.
Now on to why these constants are bullshit.
For every universe that exists with a city, a man and a lighthouse, there exists one without all three. After all they are all choices that are made, so for every Comstock, there is a Booker, one that did not build a flying city. The very simple reason why you concluded this narrative cop out of constants made sense is that you started counting the trees at the start of the game. Where the city already exists.
However both games, Bioshock 1 and 3, establish times before that. Times where decisions were made to build these cities, the lighthouses and to create the men.
If Andrew Ryan had made the choice to stay in Russia, which he did because his counterpart made the choice to leave, there now exists a universe without a Rapture, a lighthouse and a Jack. Sure one of those universes might still end up with a Soviet Version of Rapture, a Soviet Lighthouse and a Gregory instead of a Jack, but the counter part to that universe lacks them.
Unless the claim is that someone, somewhere will always build a city, a lighthouse and have a man oppose him. Set A is not rapture. Set A is the start of the universe, or the start of a different universe that they are a parallel off. The fact is every choice makes a different universe, as set up by the game. So literally when someone asks you if you'd like some chips two universes are formed, one where you said yes and one where you said no.
Now even if Rapture was Set A, that already means there is a Set B2 that has no Rapture. Why? Construction. The guy that built Rapture said no. He also had a choice there so he created a universe wherein he said yes to Ryan's money and another where he said no because he thought him a lunatic for example.
The problem with infinity is it's very nature that there are no limitations. So your very first subset would in fact not be the father daughter story or one without. It would be the subset of someone deciding to scratch their ass after Booker got baptized, the baptizing event being another that leads to a universe with and without the constants. After all the universe splits along the timeline of choices. So it's just a matter of which choice came first. which results in an exponentially larger amount of universes for each subsequent choice.
So grant that Subset A is the start of the game. Choice 1 is get out the boat. Choice 2 is go inside. Choice 3 is wash face. Choice 4 is continue walking up stairs after seeing dead guy. Choice 5 is find solution to puzzle. Choice 6 is get into seat. Choice 7 is struggle or not and so on.
So before we even have entered Columbia we have created 7 universes that have created their own universes universes based on the choices you made in those universes, the maximum if we stick to the 7 choices being made in that timespan would be 5040 different universes, granted there were only two options to each choice.
Now granted my picks here were arbitrary for what constitutes choices but really what is a choice but an action we decide to make? I could have even put in walk to the lighthouse as a choice because technically it is. Seeing as that is what the universe has set up as the only rule for creating a different universe is that a choice has to be made and that a universe is created for both choices because they are both always made.
It is a ridiculous hodgepodge of universes that are incapable of having any constants because by the very laws set up by the game there has to exist a universe without these constants because these constants were the results of conscious actions, which always involve choices. Heck with the inter-dimensional time hopping we even SAW a universe where there was no city, no lighthouse or a man. It was only the dimension hopping that eventually got the man to the universe with the city and lighthouse.
The more you think about this you realize it's not science or even part of the story.
It's what they hung up in their offices as their work mantra of laziness.
"One city, one lighthouse, one man"
It's their formula for Bioshock games
Also note that if we get actually really meta the reality is that Subset A is OUR universe before Ken Levine decided to make Bioshock. So B1 and B2 have Bioshock. No Bioshock. Even in the realm of meta there exists a universe without the three supposed constants. The worst thing you can do to this game is pretend like it's science is sound. Let the suspension of disbelief handle what it tells you, because if you think about it you will go insane from the stupidity.
Now onto the question you asked about what I said about a possible plot for this game.
No that was just me trying to show you how being Ryan's errand boy could still hold to the absurd rule of three constants. Heck if they actually DO use that plot I am so going to rub it in later.
Also why not a woman? We have seen that sex is utterly interchangeable in these universes. So yes it's a marketing choice to not have a female lead in it. They just test so much poorer with focus groups that got us that hilariously boring box cover in the first place.
Don't say things like "you just didn't understand it" I am not taking offence here, it just sound really lazy. It is pseudoscience my good man, because they limit it with 3 constants (ignoring the fact cake and turrets are also constants).
The actual science behind it, that universes branch of existing parallel to each other based on choices is plausible, but that is actual science, you know what they didn't do? Make a set of constants for their universes because they realized that there would also exist universes without those constants. Actually the only constant they had to include was that in all of these universes the universe exists because that is the only way there could even be a universe in the first place. Or maybe not. The first choice for the universe was existence, so technically there have to be no constants. A was just nothing or the absence of a universe.
So we have a B1 and B2 where a universe exists and where one doesn't. The game and we exist on the one branch that could continue, or maybe B2 made the same choice of existence again where it split into C1 and C2 where again one exists and one does not. Maybe B2 gave rise to an infinite number of universe creations time and time again. The possibilities are literally endless in this and Bioshock infinite wants to tie it down with 3 constants in all universes?
Like I said earlier DeWitt would roll in his grave if he saw what kind of multiverse they created in this game.
PS: I have said my say about this many times already, I honestly have no desire to go into this discussion again and again. The game just isn't worth spending hours of my time discussing it so I won't.
Nothing personal, you made some good points about how it might be possible to achieve a set of universes that have three constants in them. However it still fails because the claim is universal constants across infinite universes. To assume an arbitrary starting point in universes established to have past histories is just ridiculous.
It is one of the stupidest things pretending to be scientific I heard in a game.
