Bioshock Infinite ending feels kind of dumb

I've just finished the Bioshock Infinite main story and decided to write a short summary of my opinion on it's ending.

<note warning>Warning: Spoilers for Bioshock franchise ahead. Also if the following post sounds too technical and uncomprehensible, it may have something to do with the fact that the title of my dissertation-to-be is “Temporal Aspects of Transparent Intensional Logic” .</note>

Since I've played the previous Bioshocks I knew there is a very good chance that Booker DeWitt is not going to survive. This is not a criticism of Bioshock, I've really liked the game. Rather this is a wish that maybe someone would create that is as beautiful and as deep as Bioshock without Greek tragedy style final scene, where everybody goes bonkers and people die.

In the end, Elizabeth supposedly sees and understands the infinite universes. As far as I understand, the basic idea of the theory of infinite parallel universes is that every possible universe exists (and of course, no impossible universe exists).

If Elizabeths want to prevent any Booker from becoming a Comstock, there needs to be at least as many Elizabeths as Comstocks to drown the appropriate number of Bookers. This is of course assuming that universes are countably infinite (if they are not, then the whole idea is pointless). The basic problem twofold. First is that the Booker/Comstock schizm happened before successful rescue of Elizabeth and is its direct cause (without a Comstock there won't be an Elizabeth) and therefore there are at least as many Comstocks as universe-travelling Elizabeths.

Furthermore there is at least one Elizabeth that is not participating in this solution - for example the old one from New York, but since it is possible that Elizabeth may have been killed by a stray bullet during her rescue, there must also be an universe where this is true. Simply put, there is just not enough Elizabeths to go around.

And that's not every angle. It is possible for an Elizabeth to decide that killing her father is not a particularly good idea and similarly some Bookers may not be too keen on dying. And if there is one such universe (hint: it is - every possible universe exists) then there is an infinite amount of them (not just “milions of milions”).

Unfortunately the Booker and Elizabeth we see at the end of the game are those dumb enough to not realize this.

Another thing is the final tally of people saved versus people killed. Let's assume that the drowning solution worked in all universes and there is no Comstock. This also erases any Elizabeths. Hopefully this idea of hers is not supposed to save her, since it essentially kills her. I assume that she wants to prevent the destruction of New York by Columbia. This overall hinges quite a lot on the assumption that without Comstock there won't be Columbia. Since there is actually at least one other person with a similar idea (Andrew Ryan later creates Rapture), I personally wouldn't bet on it. And since there is no Booker and Elizabeth in any universes to intervene, the results could prove be quite fatal.

Finally, there is a possibility that if all possible universes are actual universes (I hope not, since that would get a lot of me randomly killed all the time), then there are universes, in which the Bioshock ending is the happy one.