Gameplay:

BioShock Infinite is set in 1912 and takes place in a fictional steampunk city-state called "Columbia"—named in homage to the female personification of the United States—which is suspended in the air through a combination of giant blimps, balloons, reactors, propellers, and "quantum levitation". The city of Columbia was founded by self-proclaimed prophet Zachary Hale Comstock, who used his connections in Congress to have the American government fund the floating city. The government intended Columbia to serve as a floating world's fair and as a display to the rest of the world of the success of American exceptionalism. Initially seen as the pride of the United States, tensions eventually rose between Columbia and the US government, and Columbia ultimately seceded from the United States and disappeared into the clouds. Free from outside influence, Comstock now had complete control over the city, transforming it from a floating world's fair to a theocratic police state, with Comstock worshipped as a prophet, and the Founding Fathers of the United States venerated as religious icons. Institutional racism and elitism are widespread in the city, with minorities serving as a labor underclass of Columbia.