Well that's fifty-five down...

All the pieces fell into place during the final case and the real conspiracy was revealed.

The plan basically was to buy up a bunch of houses for cheep, and those who didn't sell would have their house burned down while away on a trip they "won", then build prop houses on them as cheep as possible. The new houses would inflate the value of the property ten times, and all those houses just happened to be where the new highway would go through. So when the government bought out the land at the inflated price all the conspirators would become insanely rich.

The problem is that Cole's old platoon kept getting mixed up in it. Part of the money used to build the cheep houses came from the morphine that half the platoon stole. Then the guy they used to burn the hold out hoses happened to be the flamethrower operator of the platoon (and crazy). Then you have Cole assigned to check out the burnt houses, and the other guy investigating the insurance claims.

And the whole story of the platoon got explained too. Cole survived a major battle in the war by freaking out and hiding, but being the only survivor made him look like a hero and he got a big metal. Feeling that he didn't deserve it Cole then became obsessed with completing every assignment to the letter, much to the frustration of his squad. On one assignment they had to clear out cave systems the enemy were hiding in, but due to Cole's obsessive orders they charged in flamethrower first on a cave that was actually a civilian field hospital. The flamethrower operator lost his mind over the mistake and the medic got so pissed that he shot Cole in the back. Cole gets sent home early due to his injury and becomes a big shot cop, while the others are left to mop up. Pissed that Cole gets all the praise and promotion despite being a cowardly screw-up the medic comes up with the idea to steal the morphine so that the troops can at least get some money for their troubles.

So the last case of the game switches back and forth between Cole and the new guy as they track down the flamethrower guy who kidnapped the German singer, ending in a shootout in the aqueduct tunnels. The new guy escapes with the singer but Cole is killed when the place floods. Half the conspirators turn on the other half (the ones that happen to be dead) and posthumously claim Cole as the hero that brought them to justice.

So now it's on to the The Ico & Shadow of the Colossus Collection!
Also today I finally was able to pick up my copy of Atelier Totori ~ The Adventurer of Arland. While adding it to my title bar I decided to cut off the last 10 games I finished to get it back to a reasonable length, not that it will stay like that for long since I'm getting Rune Factory for the PS3 next week...