[Typhoid]

Yeah, don't get me wrong - I can see where you're coming from Strangie.
But I read the setting on wikipedia the other night, and not one part of me was currently thinking about "This is like today!", rather "this is a cool concept for a horror game."

If the Setting and Plot have already been posted, my bad.

The primary setting of BioShock Infinite is a city suspended in the air by giant blimps and balloons, called "Columbia", named in homage of the 'female personification' of the United States. Unlike the secret development of the underwater city of Rapture, Columbia was built and launched in 1900 by the American government to much fanfare and publicity. The city was meant to symbolize the ideas of exceptionalism;[1][2] the reveal trailer for the game alludes to the 1893 Worlds Fair which is historically considered to be the emergence of American exceptionalism.[3] On the surface, Columbia appeared to be designed as a floating 'Worlds Fair' that could travel across the globe; however, some time after its launch but before the game's events, the city was revealed to be a well-armed battleship, and became involved in an "international incident".[4] The city was disavowed by the United States government, and the location of the city was soon lost to everyone else.[4][5]

As a result of the city's isolation, a civil war eventually broke out on Columbia between different factions of citizens, each trying to seize control of the city from the powers-that-be.[6] At the time of the game's events, only two main factions remain. One are the remnants of those retaining power over the city, whose spokesperson is an ultranationalist politician named Saltonstall. The city's ruling class, which seeks to keep Columbia purely for American citizens, denying foreigners the same privileges and a group named Vox Populi (Latin for "voice of the people"), a rag-tag resistance group opposed to the ultranationalists. The Vox Populi is formed from several factions with similar ideologies that fought to seize control and restore the rights of Columbia citizenship to all. However, years of war and struggle have driven the Vox Populi to fight the powers-that-be solely out of blind hatred, resulting in more violent and brutal methods and leading to subfactions in the group.[6]

Like Rapture, Columbia is considered a failed utopia, but with signs present suggesting a theocratic government taking control at some point, and similar racial-purification concepts such as Nazism, jingoism, and xenophobia.[7][8][2][9] One of the items in the press packages for the game included a tag that would purportedly be worn by immigrants aboard Columbia, requiring those of non-European descent to list out numerous details, including religious affiliation and data relating to eugenics; another item was a Columbia propaganda poster that warned "We must all be vigilant to ensure the purity of our people.”[9] Columbia has been compared to a cross between steampunk and the Star Wars Bespin cloud city,[8] as well as the airships of Final Fantasy settings[7] though Irrational's Ken Levine has compared the weaponized city to the Death Star.

Plot:

The events of the game take place in 1912. The player assumes the identity of Booker DeWitt, a former, disgraced agent of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, who was dismissed for behavior beyond the acceptable bounds of the Agency. He is hired by mysterious individuals, aware of Columbia's location, and tasked to invade the air-city and rescue a young woman named Elizabeth, who has been held aboard the air-city for the last twelve years.[4][8] Though DeWitt finds Elizabeth easily enough, he quickly discovers that Elizabeth is central to the city's conflict between these two groups, as each faction seeks to use Elizabeth to turn the tide of the conflict in their favor, forcing DeWitt and Elizabeth to trust each other in order to escape.[5][6]

Though the game takes place before the events of the previous two BioShock games (occurring from the 1960s to 1970s), Irrational Games has not confirmed if BioShock Infinite shares the same universe with these titles; Ken Levine left the question of the possibility unanswered in an interview stemming from the game's announcement