Just a minute or two after he refuses to clean his own hands, he is forced into baptism to enter the city. from the very start of the game, Booker is on a mission to kill himself, mowing through squads of sky police, who deserve no redemption, according to his own morality. his daughter coming to the same conclusion at the end is quite ironic, and also entirely thematic. he doesn't offer forgiveness to himself (this choice is made literally at the start of a campaign where he is essentially killing himself). but that isn't mocking the concept of forgiveness itself, it is revealing that HE has accepted that he is beyond redemption.
when Booker arrives and is given the chance to baptize himself, he declines it. only fitting that violence would perpetuate something he created.Īt first i also thought the game was poking fun at religion, now, i think it is used in a much more subtle and nuanced way. there was no way to clean the blood off his hands, after participating in massacres against Native and Asian Americans, yet he wanted to create a paradise anyways. "why couldn't this mass murderer have made a nice non violent walking simulator?" it actually misses the point entirely. It is funny that when the game came out all the critics were saying "I wish we didn't have to kill anyone, whole game should have been a walking simulator", almost mimicking Comstock's lofty aspirations for his paradise city in the sky. but definitely if someone tried to do the same nowadays, it would have a whole nother feeling to it. i can see them making a game, wanting to do Reconstruction-era style, then realizing all the "problematic" elements from America's past, and instead of ignoring it, embracing it, and commenting on it. In many ways it seems to be a twist on "mythic America is an evil place and we must kill the white man for creating so much suffering" which is a narrative that has taken an overly-simplified, violent turn as of late, but back when this game was created, i think it was a little ahead of it's time.