On "constants and variables" - I agree that it's ridiculous and arbitrary, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Not only is it a massive cop-out to say that some things in the universe are constants (which was the writer's poor attempt to handwave many of the game's plot holes), but the constants they chose were, frankly speaking, completely stupid.
Case in point: "there's always a man, a city, and a lighthouse". So...what, in the infinite possible universes, there always has to be a lighthouse in the middle of the ocean leading to a fantastical city run by an evil man? Why? How does that make any sense? Why should we simply accept that without calling it out for being complete handwavey nonsense; a lame attempt to include a Rapture cameo?
For that matter, the game seems to want to be a story about infinite universes with infinite possibilities, but then it also tries to have universal constants that cannot be changed - it clashes infinity with inevitability, but the two simply can't work together.
If there are universal constants, and if anything during the game is a universal constant, then literally nothing we do during the game will matter - it'll always happen in every single one of an infinite number of universes, no matter what we try to do to stop it. Alternately, if we do have the possibility to prevent the events in the game from ever occurring (such as by drowning pre-Comstock Booker), then by definition nothing in the game is a constant. You can't have it both ways.
[/spoiler] Come to think of it, the game's final line (the Big Twist) isn't even necessarily true anyway. Observe: [spoiler]In universe A, Booker either doesn't get baptised (timeline A1) or gets baptised (timeline A2). According to the story, A1 becomes Booker...but A2 isn't actually Comstock. We have no idea who A2 is. We never meet him.
Why? Because the Comstock we encounter in the game is actually B2 - a 'different' Booker from a completely different universe (universe B), who happened to get baptised at roughly the same time A1 didn't get baptised.
We know that they're from different universes since universe A has a male Lutece, and universe B has a female Lutece - and we have no idea how many other differences there are between the two universes. For all we know, Booker getting baptised in universe A could have led to him living out his days as a humble novelist - we never see him. We don't know for certain that Booker A and B are even the 'same' guy - we're basically just told to assume that Booker would have the same personality in each different universe...even though we see that characters may have different personalities in different universes, so bugger that.
[/spoiler] Oh, and while I'm at it... [spoiler]Why drown Booker? Couldn't Elizabeth just go back in time at any point before Anna gets sold off, and convince Comstock to not be a jerk, potentially killing him in the universes where he doesn't comply?
If the Luteces had similar handwave-y godpowers to Elizabeth, and they weren't constrained by the siphon...why did they need Booker? Couldn't they have just fixed everything by themselves, or at least freed Elizabeth earlier?
If every possible decision has already been made, and will already have been made, and so on...surely Elizabeth's drowning of Booker has already occurred prior to the start of the game? Thus...well, the victory is a bit pointless, really. There were already infinite universes where Comstock isn't around to take Anna.
What about the infinite universes where Booker chose not to hand Anna over to Comstock? And all of the ones where Comstock decided to just be a nice guy, or even a doting father to Elizabeth? Surely they all existed prior to the start of the game, so...
Why did Elizabeth say that Booker never defeats the Songbird? He had already witnessed its weakness, and given infinite attempts at drowning it (let along simply blowing it up, especially in those 'hero of the revolution' universes), he would have worked it out. Besides, they -did- defeat it,so...she was wrong?
[/spoiler] Anyway, I could go on and on - and honestly, those aren't even my strongest points against the game, they're just my current thoughts while posting this. I've got many more fundamental complaints. The story is simply flawed, and no amount of writer handwaving will fix it.
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