The question of Bioshock 2’s canonicity has popped up again and the debate around the issue still bothers me. To start things off I’ll get the big issue out of the way: it doesn’t matter what Levine says about canonicity because he doesn’t own the games. The company does. Even if Sea of Dreams (BS2) was a 2k Boston led cashgrab meant to eke out some coin while Irrational Games worked on Infinite edit #276, it still holds a canonical place in the series merely by existing.* BS2 may not have factored into Levine’s created vision, but his vision had always been held in place by technological restrictions, budget and deadlines. B2 cannot be discounted for the same reasons why the brand name wasn’t retired when Irrational was shut down or why the canon doesn’t continue on in spirit through the pitch for the psp game that was rejected.

Putting that realist common sense aside, questions about cannon in Bioshock are problematic. Bioshock has always been about choice, and even if videogames tend to treat the bad ending as a narratological punishment of the player’s sociopathic gaming tendencies, they still hold weight when compared to the happy endings where you get sunny skies and fully actualized mutant children leading their fully actualized mutant lives well after you die. Some might say “would you kindly” subverts the individualism of the setting and the gamer’s personal experience while playing the game, forcing them to come to terms with the illusion of choice (and therefore the inevitability of cross game canon) but they forget how much their in-game choices matter. It was the little decisions away from the cut scenes and loading screens, the decisions that determined whether or not you spared a little girl’s life at the cost of less power and more trips to the vita-chamber which were really important. Bioshock Two took the same concept and applied it to both Subject Delta (the player) and Eleanor Lamb, the quintessential little sister who’s personality and values are shaped not by her cultish handlers but by how ruthless you the player were in reaching her.

Of course Infinity takes these ideas and cranks them up to eleven, granting us understandable methodology to use while considering the impossibly complex themes driving the story. Whether or not our prior actions saved the lives of Eleanor Lamb or the Little Sisters could now be understood as a variable in the constants putting their lives at risk. Because the scope of the story had expanded considerably, our impact on it had to seem diminished as a result. The plot is operating beyond subjunctive possibility; it would have been heartwarming if our Booker got to Paris, but our Booker is the culmination of a character being pushed beyond the myriad causalities in which he exists.

The Colombia in which Booker fights for the Vox is a world in which the quantum metaphysics stemming from Elizabeth are taken out of the equation, and everything involving volition and determinism isn’t brought up. The Colombia that rains fire upon New York comes about after the city’s open hypocrisy uses its perverted faith to strip free will from the populace. Characters can be killed or saved, but there is always a reality where the opposite has come to pass. Elizabeth allowing Booker the chance at letting go of the bigger picture and finding his happy ending in Paris means that there were realities in which he did so at the cost of closing his eyes to the truth behind his situation. One thing is possible because the possibility of everything alongside it; the only canon that exists is the superposition and the absolutist way Elizabeth wiped away the constants that created her.

Burial at Sea screws with this dynamic by stepping away from Elizabeth’s secular open theism* and stepping towards full on determinism. I’ve previously gone into how this does and doesn’t work, but for the sake of the question of canon, Burial at Sea doesn’t sink what came before it. Infinite made clear that canon (or metacanon if you will) isn’t bound to one player’s experience, but is instead tied to each and every decision made by each and every person who experienced the product. One story wiping away another story doesn’t mean that the other story didn’t happen; the Dewitt we played as and the Comstock we killed were and are and will be, as are their stories. Talking about cannon is dumb. All linear cannon does is minimize possible experiences we can have with the series.

*1For those foolish enough to bring up Dragon Ball GT, remember that DBZ cannon stops mattering once the higher ups want to make a movie, and those movie fights tend to be the best thing about the franchise. If we use dragon ball analogies, BaS would fall under the noncannon anime movie category anyway, and BaS would be the Bardok special whereas 2 would be the unnecessary but still awesome Broly legendary super saiyan reframing)

(*2link thank you wikisurfing);

*3(a vile postprotestant heresy I found thanks to wikisurfing)

Note: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WatsonianVersusDoylist

If you want a more pragmatic examination of this issue, tv tropes is your friend. Start at http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CuttingOffTheBranches then go to http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NoCanonForTheWicked and watch your day slip away. That’s right, this was an elaborate ruse meant to get you stuck in tv tropes.