The Greens is the third district investigated in Criminal Case: The Conspiracy.
Previously known as the dodgy and crime-infested Industrial Area, The Greens has gone through what's possibly the biggest amount of changes in all of Grimsborough over the past five years: gangs, poverty, and illegal drugs have been mostly eradicated, tech startups and trendy business such as smoothie bars and microbreweries are now a prominent sight, and Hipsters have flooded and radically gentrified the district so much the whole neighborhood might as well be an entirely different location.
But despite that, murder and shady ordeals still seem to be at the order of the day.
The Greens primarily focuses on learning about Tony Marconi's activities and supposedly honest business in the district, as well as investigating his seemingly connections with Zoe Kusama's disappearance as discovered in the previous one. In addition, it also focuses on dealing with DreamLife, a tech firm whose true intentions and alignment are put into doubt when their latest release, a virtual reality game, starts having negative and addictive effects on its increasingly delusional players.
Cases set in The Greens
- Gone Pear-Shaped: A phone company founder dies after eating a poisoned pear in his own store.
- Byte the Dust: A former gang leader and video game owner is gutted outside of a microbrewery.
- Murder on the Dance Floor: A DJ is electrocuted inside of a nightclub.
- Buzz Kill: A skincare entrepreneur is stung to death by a swarm of bees after being pushed onto a hive.
- Downward-Facing Dead: A yoga instructor is drowned in the water feature of his studio.
- Game Over: A virtual reality hostess gets her head blown off with an explosive VR headset during a tech fair.
Tropes
- Arc Villain: Rozetta Pierre is an Implied example. While she's the founder of DreamLife and the creator of a new VR game that has been getting people dangerously addicted to it, the district ends with her true involvement being left entirely ambiguous when not only she excuses herself claiming that the addiction-inducing "bug" wasn't officially authorized and the responsible party has already been fired, but also provides you with the means of getting its victims back to normal without asking for anything in return. As such, The Greens is left with no established antagonist until Rozetta's evilness and direct involvement with the bug are properly confirmed a few districts later.
- Ambiguously Evil: A recurring theme throughout the district is that the player and the police department are unsure of who's to be trusted. Are those former criminals running honest businesses truly reformed or not? Is Marconi being genuine when he says his security company operated by former gangsters has nothing shady going on behind scenes? And what about DreamLife, the tech giant releasing addiction-inducing VR games to the market while trying to hide their involvement with the fallen satellite and Marconi's company?
- Breather Episode: After already having to deal with a serial killer and the immediate aftermath of a devastating earthquake, The Greens instead offers a nice change of pace with a low-stakes plot devoid of much conflict besides Jones' already established beef with Marconi, and not only The Climax's killer ends up being far more sympathetic (albeit still in the wrong) than the previous two, but the Ambiguously Evil Arc Villain of the district is also much less troublesome than her predecessors. At least for this portion of the game, that's it.
- A Day in the Limelight:
- Rupert and Amir gets a fair amount of focus in The Greens, as Rupert's addiction to DreamLife's VR game and Amir's increased workload because of it end up being an important subplot for the storyline.
- Marconi also gets his fair share of protagonism in this district, as the police department arrives to The Greens with the purpose of investigating his business and how he's connected with Zoe's disappearance. And while nothing is truly made clear by the end besides the fact Marconi's security company is the one guarding the fallen satellite for DreamLife, it's safe to say the former mobster is now on an Rivals Team Up relationship with the police.
- Heel–Face Town: Thanks to One-Tooth Sam using his fortune to gentrify it over the course of five years, the Industrial Area has gone from being a poverty, crime, and gang-infested Urban Hellscape to a modernized neighborhood thriving with life and security, full of trendy business and tech startups that have attracted lots of young people and Hipsters who now live in The Greens.
- Hipster: Thanks to the vast gentrification and modernization of the district, most of its inhabitants and suspects you meet here are this.
- Just One More Level!: One of the main focuses of the district is dealing with an addiction-inducing VR game that has been turning people into truants who, in order to keep continuously playing, neglect their health and basic necessities and outright turns them aggressive if they're deprived of their headset. It's eventually revealed the game was specifically programmed to induce this effect on its player.
- Recurring Character: The main recurring characters for The Greens are Rozetta Pierre, Tony Marconi, Officer Tim Cooper, Annie Schmidt, and to a lesser extent Juniper.
- Shout-Out: The Additional Investigation for the district is called "Is This Just Fantasy?"
- Tomorrowland: Thanks to the amount of tech startups and genius inventors that have gentrified the district, The Greens now serves as the main source of innovation and technology in Grimsborough, a great contrast to the regressive Urban Hellscape it was five years ago.
- Two Lines, No Waiting: The Greens focuses both on investigating Tony Marconi's business and ties with Zoe's disappearance, and also dealing with DreamLife's VR game that has been making players too dependent beyond a simple addiction.
