BioShock: Infinite announced

The setting:
It's 1912 and Irrational still have a thing for displaced cities: first the crumbling underwater meritocracy of Rapture, and now the floating utopia of Columbia - the two universes have not been explicitly linked. It's vaguely steam-punk in style, with huge cloth dirigibles tethered to cobbled streets and beautiful turn of the century architecture.

It appears modular in design, with winding monorail systems linking areas of the city together across and above the huge distances below. It's bright where Rapture was dark, warm and saturated where Rapture freezing and dank. And like Rapture, it too has "gone wrong" for reasons not yet known, and has armed itself to the teeth and floated off into the clouds with its remaining population.

The characters:
You're Booker DeWitt (an anagram of "Better Kid, Woo!"), a Pinkerton agent hired to find a woman aboard this floating city gone rogue. Of course, she's no regular lass, possessing seemingly magical telekinetic powers not at all dissimilar to those of Rapture's gene splicing enemies. The implication however, is that she's no enemy, rather she's your ally aboard this hostile blimp-metropolis. You too will earn magic powers, the first of which is Murder of Crows - the ability to fire angry birds from your hands. Yup.

The baddies:
There's an apparent fear of outsiders aboard the city, a distrust of foreigners which seems to stem from the very core of the game's sentiment. Salton is a preachy old man who speaks to this fear of removal of freedom, specifically that the governments of terra firma will take away your guns and your livelihood.

Robotic guards with beating, organic hearts are also seen, conjuring up immediate thoughts of Big Daddies, protective agents and security in what's become a tightly controlled, Imperialist society. Gone mad. It's probably a society gone mad too.

First impressions:
Well, it's spectacular looking. An environment every bit as original, inviting and fantastic as BioShock's - a blue sky game with a deep-running artistic, painterly style. Our only concerns at this very early stage might be the heavy handed parallels with Irrational's previous game - magic spells, a decaying and frightened society, a speech-loving, stalwart leader. We'd love to see a change of pace here as well as a change of palette. But hey, we're happy enough with a game this visually striking. Especially one that contains no space marines whatsoever.

The release date:
That'll be 2012. Also known as "ages away". We'll have plenty more to tell you very soon.