This was made as a homework assignment I just finished it and will upload it so you all can see my grammatical errors. Have a fun read and watch out for spoilers!

I have now played through Bioshock Infinite and are going to talk about the narrative in four characters that have appeared in the game. Here I will list them and talk about them one at a time. I will have to mention that I will not talk about Zachary Hale Comstock because he and the main character Booker DeWitt –

SPOILERS FROM HERE ON FORTH IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN OR PLAYED THE GAME STOP NOW!

-share the same story in a way.

So I have picked the following characters narrative.

• Booker DeWitt
• Elizabeth
• Lady Comstock
• Handyman

So let’s get into it.

Booker DeWitt

Since this is the main character you are given several choices in how you perceive him. If you want to sum up his story it’s a nine act hero’s story. He can be a cold stone murderer with a short temper or a person only killing because he has to. When I played him he was the latter.

Act 0

Act 0 it’s a story we do not know yet but we see a part of it in the beginning. It’s DeWitt’s past you can see it in some flashbacks and in the end we get the hole story. DeWitt has a debt to pay, we think it is money but it turns out to be a moral debt. He finds out that Elizabeth is his daughter and when she was young he gave her away to Zachary Hale Comstock. BUT here is the twist Act 0 is the Baptism when the main character refuse the baptism in the end we hear the following conversation:
Elizabeth 1 – “ He is Zachary Hale Comstock”
Elizabeth 2 – “ No he is Booker DeWitt”
DeWitt – “No… I am both”
This is both the start of his journey and the end because here he changes everything.

Act 1

Act one is at the beginning when our hero wakes up on a boat with to people rowing it. They talk about our hero but when he asks them for information none is given. We later find out that those persons are the reason he is there in the first place. So we see start on a bridge on a rock with a lighthouse on it and since we have no other way to go we go there.

Act 2

So here we have the bad thing happening I want to include two places for this act since I am not sure witch to pick. So here is choice number one.
Number one
When you play the sound in the tower a dark sound comes in the background. You can feel that something bad is going to happen.
Number two
When you come up to this magical new place a small boys runs up to you and tells you that he has a message. The message says beware the number 77 and we think we can avoid it. Then we come to a gathering of people in front of a stage. You have three choices but it all end up the same accept you come out with a character you like. The guards find a brand on your hand and you learn that you are the dark prophet. The guards try to kill you and the slaughter begins!

In both of these we also see those two persons that used the boat to get us to the starting point. They seem to know what is going too happened but will not tell us. They are a type of mentor, they keep us moving forward.

Act 3

This is where DeWitt meets Elizabeth and his counterpart Zachary Hale Comstock. He first sees Elizabeth and we learn that she been trapped in a tower for all her life. When they try to escape they get chased by a giant bird and we also meet Zachary Hale Comstock whom seems to have some kind of power.

Act 4

Since he accepted everything in the beginning by thinking he had a mission this act never really comes through. I would argue that he accepts all this bad things that are happening and that everything in this world is messed up when Elizabeth and he rides in the The First Lady’s airship. There he tries to comfort her when he wants to take the ship to New York. He gets knocked out by her and wakes up with Daisy Fitzroy staring down on him. She gives him a mission to gather guns for her rebellion. While he has to do that he also have to find Elizabeth again. Get shoved off the airship and like just start doing what he has to.

Act 5

All this time he gets tested in several ways. This act is more spread all over the acts BUT it starts at the end of act 4.  I did not really see Daisy Fitzroy as an ally the only ones we guess are allies are the twins the rest are persons who have their own goals in mind. You are only a tool for them and in the end they will turn into enemies in the end. The only one we trust are Elizabeth and she grows with you. There are test you feel ordeal by getting reminded by the past. A fight at big horn and the general that has gone there with you makes it clear that you are suffering from that fight. They solve several thins during their second quest and paralleled universe travel makes the story a bit blurry.

Act 6

When they make it back to the First Lady they get shoot down and decide to take the fight to Zachary Hale Comstock. They have the power of paralleled universe travel and vigor’s so go.

Act 7

This starts when they both are at the bridge going for the house of Zachary Hale Comstock when the Songbird attacks and throws Booker DeWitt and Elizabeth make the bird take her away so that DeWitt will live. When he get up again he runs on the bridge toward Zachary Hale Comstock since that’s the way the songbird flew. When he pass through the fog he says “It’s cold like January” or was it February I do not recall at the moment”. Snow has fallen and the sky is grey. We learn that six months have passed and that Elizabeth has become a bad person destroying the world bellow. We meet the future Elizabeth and she gives you a note to give to the younger Elizabeth. If this is time travel or parallel world we do not know. But it points towards that Elizabeth can control both.
She sends you to the young Elizabeth and you rescue her.

Act 8

They win the fight but get to see that there are many worlds overall and in the end both of them end up at that place. In several universes in several ways, she can see it all how it all connects. This leads to the knowledge of abandoning your child Anna and that you and Zachary Hale Comstock are the same person. It all end with you drowning before the baptism is done and so it all ends for DeWitt and our hero.

Elizabeth

So Elizabeth is with you almost all the time in the game. She starts as a dreamer and quickly learns of the real world’s brutality. Her story could be summoned up as a Three Act hero. She is the hero in the end since she is the one who stops it all. Yet we do not know for sure if she still lives in the end.

Act 1

We see her in the room and then a guy falls through her roof. It turns out to be DeWitt. She knows nothing about him and when a noise / song (I want to point out the sound was more of an alarm for me in the beginning) She tells him to get away to hide because he is coming. We do not know then but she is talking about the Songbird who has been her Warden since she was little. We learn this when she tells DeWitt just that sentence “I liked him at first since he gave me books and stuff when I was younger, but as I grew older I realized he was my Warden”. This we learn later but it’s worth to mention. Since she has been locked up all this time and DeWitt gives her the key to escape she see an adventure in her future. DeWitt seems like a nice person and she trust him but then when they are buying tickets to The First Lady airship things go wrong and DeWitt has to kill the people around her. When they get to The First Lady DeWitt is putting in the coordinates to New York. He betrayed him so she knocks him out.

Act 2

Part 1

She runs away from DeWitt seeing him as a bad man but soon she is hunted by several other men. She gets captured and when she realizes she is being taken back to the tower, she starts to panic. When all hope falls but DeWitt comes to her rescue. She still doubt him but when he gets attacked by a Handyman and almost falls to his death a realization hits her that only he has not forced her more than once. Because he is the only one who seems to care she rescues him. He is going to help her get to Paris and that is all.
This is where things start to go wrong in her world. They have to get weapons to the rebel army in order to get the airship. Many acts of evil is shown to her and she learns more about her power. She sees all the bad things happening to the poor people and she even tells us that she believe in Fitzroy. “It will be like Les Miserables” and a small hope in human kind has been lit. But they finish the mission that’s the end of her fairy world. To protect a boy she has to kill Fitzroy and now she sees that the world is not what she thought.

Part 2

When The First Lady gets taken down by the Songbird she learns that Zachary Hale Comstock is using it to get to her. We learn that a music instrument is used in order to make Songbird do what you want. Now she is learning more of what she did not want to see before: How to operate in a world of cruelty and murder also how to cope with it.
By her side is always DeWitt and they grow a strong bond she learns her mother’s history and even meets her. Though she tries to kill DeWitt and her she finally copes with everything and now she is ready to fight her father who she learns is not really her father. Now the battle will begin they lower the bridge and when they do Songbird almost kills DeWitt ending with her talking to the bird.
“No I am here! Take me back do this for me.” Doing so she hold out her hand one last time hoping to be saved by DeWitt but he do not reach it in time.

Act 3

Never loosing hope that she will be saved she gets tortured and operated on and after 6 month she becomes the monster Zachary Hale Comstock wanted her to be. But even after all this time DeWitt is still her hope and she is actually the one that made him come 6 month late. Because Songbird would have stopped him:

“Everytime songbird stops you”

“But I would have figured out a way to save you I would have succeeded.”

Then she hands him a note and sends him to save her in the past and hands him the note. We also learns from her younger self that she been there a while but never been killed. Things happen and they meet Zachary Hale Comstock. He starts to talk about her little finger missing on her right hand. But it makes no sense and in a rage DeWitt kills him. More fights and they learn that the tower had contained her powers all the time. They use Songbird to break the tower and then she kills the bird by teleporting to Rapture. The first place you get your powers in Bioshock the first game. She connects all the dots and we learn that DeWitt is her father. Several times they have apparently made it to the place where all the worlds are connected and nothing has changes. DeWitt tells her that killing Zachary Hale Comstock is the only way to end this. Before they go the place where he is supposed to be she tries to save her father one last time.
“Are you really sure about this?”
“I have to, it’s the only way to make up for everything I’ve done to you.”

And so it ends with several copies of her gathering in front of him at the place where he was baptized. In the end she has to kill her own father and so it ends with her standing alone in the river where he died.

Lady Comstock

If you pick up several audio devices we learn that she was a bad person at the beginning and when she meets Zachary Hale Comstock he tells her that whatever she does he will forgive her. But then her world turns around. A child that isn’t hers is now her daughter and also she finds out his plans and learns of his past. “All those unmarked body bags it can’t be true”. Doubt and fear comes over her but she do not want to hate the man that saved her from the darkness. In the end she do hate him and her life ends in tragedy. When she won’t keep the secrets of her husband anymore he kills her.
Then she get “summoned back” by force and she becomes a tormented spirit that shows her past to her daughter and she is also filled with rage over the part she played in Zachary Hale Comstock history. When she is defeated her daughter is the one that shows forgiveness one last time. She disappear with her last words hanging in the air;

“Would I have saved him?”
Elisabeth answers: “I do not know, is that even possible?”
“Find out child. Find out.”
She is one of the hardest bosses in the game because of her ability to spawn the undead for aid. But  if you hear her story you feel pity for her. With the interaction of Elizabeth it all makes it good narrative and dark backstory makes the narrative speak to you.

Handyman

Now this mini boss isn’t a joke, modifications a bloated hearth and a huge robotic body makes him scary as ****. What can be taken by the things he say though is that he did not want to be this way.

“The pain, the pain!” and “Go away please go away” is just some things you can hear him say during combat. This is a guy that can take your head in his hand and make it go away. Doesn’t that make your heart ache? This big and strong mob tries to kill you but still seems to be out of control.
He even say things like “Stop tormenting me” “I miss my own body it was so, so warm.” “Gears turn in my head and they hurt” “I want to sleep but the noise of my lungs keep me awake.” “I didn’t do anything but they did this to me anyway”.

We can see that this modification was not made with consent and the horror of this world. If you sum up the evil being done in the Bioshock Infinite world it’s the Handyman that can show how messed up this world is. He is both angry at what’s been done to him but still fights for the man that did it too him.

Conclusion and review

That concludes my look over the narrative of four characters. In all I enjoyed the game though I did not like the end, it was to anti climatic and you could feel it coming miles away when you came near the ending. I did not like it either at first I saw the protagonists as but I guess that would have been too obvious.
I got angry I felt joy and most of all I liked the gameplay BUT this THIS ENDING! I like when you have no control over what is going to happen and that destiny is your enemy or friend but this ending. I can’t get my head around why I do not like this ending. Sure as a sad ending goes it do its part really well and is even believable. In the first game the choices you did mattered in the ending and I am guessing that is what bothers me. Even when you played the game you got choices that you thought would matter in the end.                       But it did not, I like that but still hate it every bit of it. I liked my character so much that when Songbird attacked and took Elizabeth away I screamed at the top of my lungs “I AM SO GOING TO RIP YOU A NEW AS***LE!” Oh the rage I was feeling consumed every action I took for a while. Then I get this ending where I thought they would end up happy ends in tragedy.

If I grade this it gets 4 of 5 since the ending was just so not in tune with how I wanted the story to go. I played High difficulty so the fights were hard but still easy enough for a hardcore gamer. I died and got revived several times but still it was just idiotic mistakes from my part, so I liked the game.