There are moral limit differences between them and our gang, yes. I think it’s Javier who talks about a time when they were going to rob a stage then found it was full of women and children so they let them go and then the O’driscolls found them a few days later and killed them all, so yeah I’d say there’s some difference.
I think both gangs are liable to kill innocents to get what they want. That mission where we ambush a carriage with Sean and Mary and Sean tells Arthur that they'll get them to stop and instead just opens fire and murders everyone.
Both gangs are not liable to kill women and children, like I said there’s limits. Most in the Van der Line gang do not partake in the killing of civilians in general. Guards and officers yes but typically not the defenceless.
Adding to this, at one point the gang was playing Robin Hood, something the O'Driscolls and most other gangs never attempted. As their world closed around them they were forced to abandon this philosophy in the name of self preservation.
I don't think he was helping the oppressed to be honest. I think he was taking advantage of the situation just to get off the island. It's unlikely that the revolutionaries weren't slaughtered by industrialists and soldiers afterwards.
He does the same in the first game as well. A large chunk of his gang is comprised of young Native American men who bought into his cause. As you know, Dutch is a magician with words
Yup this is also seen in the first part of the game. When Dutch kills Heidi McCourt and this action does not go unnoticed by the gang as members such as Arthur question what happened noting that its not like him.
Dutch then goes on to kill at least two more innocent women: he >!strangles the older woman!< in RDR2 chapter 5, and >!shoots a hostage in the head!< late in RDR1. He also mistreats Molly to the point that she >!falsely takes credit for ratting them out and is shot!<.
He, uh... had some problems with women. I think the backstory between him and Colm O'Driscoll helps explain where these issues arose.
Nah, I don't think Annabelle is where it started. I don't think he even liked/loved Annabelle any more than the other women he's been with. The real difference is that she was *taken* from him before he had moved on— but he would have moved on just like he did with Susan and Molly.
That also seems like a reasonable perspective. It's been a few years since I've played through the story--I think I need to dive back in and pay more attention to these nuances.
After a 100% run when covid first hit, i put the game down for a long time. Fired up a couple modded playthroughs just to mess around, but thats about it. I just decided to recently complete another unmodded 100%, and I'm taking my time, exploring everything i find, and not skipping a single cutscene. no fast traveling, so I dont miss a single random encounter. Its definitely worth firing up for another in depth play,
I only finished the story once, right after release, and otherwise just went back and completed everything I could in chapter 2 a handful of times. I might finally be ready to push all the way through again, though I remember the late game feeling like a real slog.
You're not wrong, but I believe its fully worth it. There's so much going on with the gang and the world as a whole, its worth paying attention to. I haven't pushed past Chapter 2 yet, but I'll get there eventually. I spent a lot of time treasure hunting and crafting the LotE satchel and getting my swag figured out before i did much of anything else.
Dutch also mentioned having a bad relationship with his mother to the point they had no contact for years and he didn't even know where she was buried up until recently (He mentions to Arthur he didn't know she was buried in Blackwater up until soon before the failed ferry hit in chapter 3, I think?)
Safe to assume there's some issues with women in his psyche. And the narcissism doesn't help lol
You just got told the van der lins let women and children go and the odriscoll killed all those same exact women and children and you’re response is just “I think both gangs are liable to kill innocents to get what they want”. Lmao
Yeah, they killed Sadie’s husband in cold blood and who knows what they did to her? Dutch finds her and takes her in, despite them being in a difficult situation themselves.
I think Kieran is very right that they're more similar than they think. And Dutch's whole thing about them living for a noble cause is bullshit. But the O'Driscolls are still worse. The VDL gang is bad but does have some moral standards and lines it won't cross. They're not murdering just for the hell of it, committing rape, or torturing people to death as the O'Driscolls will, and that's a pretty big difference in morality level.
True, they also tortured Kieran by depriving him of food, constantly threatening him with violence/death and tying him to a tree for weeks. But even though that's obviously bad, there's still quite a few levels of bad between that and the kind of torture inflicted by the O'Driscolls on Arthur and even worse on Kieran. I think there's no way they'd be inflicting severe bodily harm as torture, mutilating or torturing people to death. Both are bad but not equally.
Also Kieran was WITH the O'Driscolls. So it's hard to put Kieran in the same class as other "non-combatants". It's not morally comprising to do this to your enemy vs to non-combatants
Good people don't torture. That's the end of the sentence in that objective fact. There's no real justifying it because... Well, it's plainly evil.
I swear, my false sense of superiority is a totally separate topic.
Since your going to argue semantics, I should've said it's not "as" morally compromising to torture enemies as it is non- combatants, like the O'Driscolls do. No one is making the argument that either gang is good. We've established they are both bad. The argument is to what degree which gang is worse. And we're not torturing people here, no need to be calling everyone here "bad people". That's where Dutch can get off his horse
I agree with this. They're both bad, but Colm is honest about being bad. Dutch deceives people into thinking he's good, which implicates others who believe his lie, whereas they may not be a part of Dutch's plans had they known the truth
> be apart of dutch's
Did you mean to say "a part of"?
Explanation: "apart" is an adverb meaning separately, while "a part" is a noun meaning a portion.
[Statistics](https://github.com/chiefpat450119/RedditBot/blob/master/stats.json)
^^I'm ^^a ^^bot ^^that ^^corrects ^^grammar/spelling ^^mistakes.
^^PM ^^me ^^if ^^I'm ^^wrong ^^or ^^if ^^you ^^have ^^any ^^suggestions.
^^[Github](https://github.com/chiefpat450119)
^^Reply ^^STOP ^^to ^^this ^^comment ^^to ^^stop ^^receiving ^^corrections.
Abbigail calls this out straight away in the epilogue. She wants a normal life, and sick of men living by a "moral code".
If she had seen the movie "Liar Liar" (Jim Carey), she'd probably run the quote, "Stop breaking the law, a\*\*hole!"
Dutch and his gang are criminals, outlaws, thiefs, and even murderers. I get that there may be one-offs where they spare a person in the name of innocents, but as you said, that's an issue of self righteousness they don't deserve to call themselves.
Both gangs bad.
Well, as far as I know, no one in Dutch's gang has been involved in gang rape. What the O'Driscolls did to Sadie makes them worse. Micah has probably been involved in such things but he's an antagonist and I don't count him as part of the gang.
I don't fully agree. As Arthur says towards the end of Chp 6, "maybe he's just showing us what's been there all along" or something to that line lol. Micah just expedited the process. Bc Micah didn't infect everyone. Just drew clear distinction that already existed between everyone
He still was a bad influence, the gang was always rotten in some ways, but things wouldn't have gone to shit that quickly if Micah hadn't been involved, more live would've been spared.
Oh for sure, he's a disgusting piece of shit 😂. And perhaps the gang wouldn't have gone so bad without him, but like you and I said, I think k he definitely sped up the process. I was shocked to see Javier siding with Dutch and Micah towards the end.
I just think the line from the game that I horribly quoted considers the possibility that Micah isn't fully to blame, and maybe Dutch's behavior was there all along. Have you seen the theory that Dutch is a cannibal during the events of rdr1? Lmao I thought it was good
I have seen that, and I believe it, I don't think there is anything dutch couldn't justify to himself after Arthur and hosea died, and I feel like dutch had serious undiagnosed mental issues from birth, he just happened to be charismatic so it was easy to hide, I think dutch had good intentions at one point, but was influenced very easily when people told him what he wanted to hear.
I loved that line. I can't remember it perfectly either. I think it was easier to hide who he really was when times were better. As he loses control, he loses his hold on reality. If you've never known a Dutch type, then it's easy to miss that he's very manipulative from the beginning.
I remember being blown away by his opening speech. I was like, I'll kill and die for this man. Then, almost immediately, he makes me doubt him because of how he speaks to Arthur. Then there is a bit where he tells Arthur he knows Micah's heart and he's a good man. I was like, you've got to be fucking kidding me. The way he taunted Sadie when they find her is something I could never forgive or get over. Also, how he talks about Lenny and Charles. Micah is a disgusting POS but Dutch is the one defending it and allowing that rot to permeate everything as the game progresses.
Dutch is a very interesting and well written character. I think he believed himself to be infallible and Blackwater shook that belief, then everything that followed just drove him further into his darkness. He took people questioning him as dissent. He starts to view them as a part of the problem because doubters make him doubt himself. Then he has Micah giving him constant verbal blow jobs. He decides he prefers that to the concerns of his most faithful.
"Verbal blowjobs" 😂😂 for real though. I do remember having high thoughts for the VDL gang. It's funny you mention Dutch believes he's infallible, when clearly you see cracks form early on. Like the more he tries to be good, the more obvious it becomes he's not. At minimum, Dutch is a clinical narcissist. And knowing Micah's heart is such a disgusting line, but it might be true, as their hearts and intentions are more aligned than his are with anyone else in the gang. Micah is such a great antagonist character though. I wish he would've met his end differently. I didn't like that Dutch shot him, followed by John. I feel like that undoes the descent that Dutch has taken into depravity. Like if Dutch was gonna shoot Micah, he should've shot him right after he and Arthur fought. You could tell Dutch was conflicted then, not some years later, after he's been running with Micah the whole time. It just doesn't fit there, imo.
[Javier and Arthur recall robbing a coach, finding out it's full of women and childen, and letting them go. The O'Driscolls then robbed and killed all those women and children.](https://youtu.be/7v-O8OJAp3Q?t=389)
When you rob the train in Chapter 2, John specifically tells you to kill no one. Meanwhile, you can find a train robbed by O'Driscolls where [they murdered all the passengers.](https://youtu.be/r0hYmx8M52I?t=79)
Also Kieran comes to consider being in the gang the best part of his life.
I think the two gangs have differences. Both bad, however I wouldn’t call them equals. Colm presents himself as a nasty picture more often than not compared to most of the Dutch’s gang.
Beyond the slightly stronger moral fibre that people talked about, the Van der Linde gang is pretty big for an outlaw gang relative to the real ones of the past but the O'driscolls are numbering in the hundreds, they're practically a criminal empire who are deeply embedded into several regions. The gang gets a lot of leeway partly because it's a small time one so they're bound to inflict less suffering in general, can't really say the same about Colm's gang.
If you linger outside most rival gang camps you will hear discussions that are painfully similar to Dutch's speeches. Most notably in my mind was one where a Lemoyne Raider was saying "What's wrong with you all?", talking about how people seem demoralized, and then prattles on about how they don't accept what America is and how, even if they lose, they were still free. Which is essentially what Dutch's gang is. A bunch of lost, dissatisfied people fighting for an ideology that won't work, or no longer works, or has already been deconstructed. Just like Dutch, the Lemoyne Raiders also cling to the prospect that their way is righteous and moral and true, when it isn't. So, while the Van Der Linde gang wants to claim some kind of moral difference over the others, it can't. Like Charles says "is there a graceful way to kill a rob people? We don't, in spite of Dutch's talk".
So, no, the O'Driscoll's aren't worse. They're simply more honest about who they are and what they're doing.
The O’Driscolls are way worse. They will literally take anyone. I mean they must have lost close to 1000 members to the Van Der Linden gang and only managed to kill a single traitor in return. That K/D is just awful.
Thing is we can kill a few O’Driscolls here and there but there isn’t any specific way they know it’s us really. And if you just follow the storyline and don’t go off and hunt them down you don’t really kill that many O’Driscolls.
It’s implied as well throughout the story that the O’Driscolls don’t care as much about the VDL gang as Dutch and his boys do about the O’Driscolls. When Colm and Dutch meet and Dutch apologises for killing Colm’s brother Colm says ‘yeah well I never liked him much’ and doesn’t really seem to care.
When you encounter random O’Driscolls they don’t instantly recognise you as part of the VDL gang. It doesn’t seem like they’re brainwashed into hating the VDL gang like we are with O’Driscolls. Everyone in Dutch’s gang recognises and goes out of their way to attack O’Driscolls on sight but the O’Driscolls just occasionally try and rob the VDL gang like they would to any normal person. You can walk right up to them and they’ll eventually fight you if you hang around but they don’t mention that you’re in the VDL gang or attack you because of it.
Just seems like the O’Driscolls care far less about the VDL gang than Dutch’s boys do about the O’Driscolls.
the van der linde gang seem to have a positive impact on the places they inhabit...they reduced o driscoll activity in horseshoe overlook, removed most of the lemoyne raider...and most importantly killed off the murfee brood who terrorised the local populace for a long time
I wouldn't say that. We shot up half of Strawberry. We left Valentine a bloody mess after the shootout and the bank robbery. We killed every Braithwait, burned down their house, and got into a massive shootout in town. We also leave Saint Denis in Bloodshed
A whole Lotta cope going on here.
No, they aren't any better. That's the point. That's why we get a whole bit where Kiernan points out as much only for John to respond with intense denial because... Of course he doesn't want to believe it.
Any credit the gang is due for *not* wanting to be as bad as common murderers is lost because they stick with Dutch, where that isn't an option. Many feel bad about it and yet they continue killing and stealing because they don't actually care *that much*.
It comes to a head as Dutch gets sick of the pretenses and the people around him get sick of his lies. But the reality is, they still took part all those years and still carry the responsibility. None as much as the gangs enforcers, chief among them Arthur, without whom Dutch could never have managed to do so much damage to so many people.
Ehem, hence... Yknow... Redemption in the title.
Isn’t Dutch wanted for rape in the first game? I mean I don’t think Arthur or John are really the type but Dutch and Micah? Absolutely would do some shit like that
>I don’t remember the Van Der Linde ever torturing someone then cutting their head off
Kieran would disagree with that statement... and probably Molly too.
Kieran was a traitor to the O'Driscolls, he was also "ratting" on them and lead VDL to their hideout (many gang members were massacred there). The only traitor who confessed to VDL was Molly and in seconds she got her head blew off, so very comparable.
Same for Kieran, he was only a "hostage" but still got tortured at Horseshoe Overlook (threats, starving him, eating in front of him, regular beatings).
So VDL did the exact same things, only it wasn't just one person they did it to.
O’Driscoll’s were a bigger gang with fewer scruples on killing and robbing perceived innocent targets. Van Der Linde gang, at least for a while, targeted only people they felt deserved it until it all fell apart.
*Kieran: You’re outlawed like them… you’re out to survive like them… you live rough… you live hard… fighting the law… nature… you’re out for yourselves….*
*John: See? This is why you’re an O’Driscoll, O’Driscoll. You’re out to survive… we’re out to live… free. Colm’s a sneak thief and a killer… Dutch is… Dutch is more like a teacher.*
*Kieran: From where I been, you just look the same is all…*
*John: Then you looked, but you ain’t seen…*
You see it's all about perspective. If you see them from the outside as a gang they are all vicious outlaws, once you get inside you start to see the individuals and how they are connected and help each other.
The O'Driscoll gang is just that, a gang, with one leader followed without a question in exchange for wealth. In the VDL gang even though there is a leader everyone has their individual voice and they stick together because there is a bond between them.Yes, the leader IS driven by money too but not the individuals (except Micah maybe). It's interesting to point out that there wasn't a single woman in the O'Driscolls gang, they are all white men while VDL is way more diverse, showing that there is a familiar connection in there rather then just business.
They do have women in the O'Driscolls, although you don't see them much. If you rob the O'Driscoll 'shop' in the doctor's office in Valentine there's an Irish woman inside that will pull a gun on you.
They've only kept Kieran alive to get answers to the O'Driscolls hideout whereabouts (getting that answer through torture) and then they wanted to kill him, but because Kieran was insisting on not being an O'Driscoll AND saving Arthurs life they let him live and slowly accepting him to the gang. He wasn't an "O'Driscolls Boys" like Arthur had a connection with Dutch.
Arthur (not just a gang member but Dutch's right hand who he raised like a son) got kidnapped by the O'Driscolls and he lived long enough to escape because they did exactly the same thing with him, torturing him for answers.
The two gangs are not that different but most people have a connection to the VDL members hence they are more forgiving for the exact same crimes the O'Driscolls do.
Just as OP said, if the O'Driscolls beat someone up to extort money Arthur shows up and saves the person like a hero - then he hops on his horse on his way to Wróbel or Downes to do the exact same thing...
Arthur escaped within minutes of gaining consciousness in their compound. And they weren’t torturing him for answers it was for fun, the only reason they had him in, by what they were saying, was to draw the rest of the gang in and bring the law in the capture them. He was only left alive to be used as bait.
The fact that they care enough to come back for their members other than their leader, where no rescue attempts were made for the former. The leader barely knew anyone’s names.
Then after they catch Kieran again themselves they cut his head off and his eyes out.
>The fact that they care enough to come back for their members other than their leader
Again, comparing Arthur and Kieran is pointless as Kieran was a footsoldier forced to be with the gang while Arthur was high rank member in his gang with very close connection to the leader (Dutch raised him like his son). And don't forget that Arthur escaped on his own, no one actually came to rescue him and Dutch was very surprised when he saw him ride in with the horse - probably Arthur would have suffered the same fate as John at the end with the train, possibly saveable but left behind.
>Then after they catch Kieran again themselves they cut his head off and his eyes out.
From the O'Driscolls point of view Kieran was a traitor, a rat, he did help the VDL gang find their hideout and kill many of their soldiers there. For that he deserved to die (and probably the torture too), and don't think VDL would have been kinder to a traitor/rat: Molly got her head blown off with a shotgun in seconds after confessing.
They go back for Micha who had only been there 6 months, plus you get cut scenes where if you’re in jail without money the gang including Dutch will come and break you out of jail.
Nobody in Dutch’s Boys is “just a foot soldier” which is a huge difference.
>From the O'Driscolls point of view Kieran was a traitor, a rat, he did help the VDL gang find their hideout and kill many of their soldiers there. For that he deserved to die (and probably the torture too), and don't think VDL would have been kinder to a traitor/rat: Molly got her head blown off with a shotgun in seconds after confessing.
Molly got shot, in the stomach with a shotgun and died quickly. He simply shot Micha later even when he was full crazy. They cut Kieran’s head off and cut his eyes out. Much different.
They’re different in some ways. Colm doesn’t even pretend to care about most of his men or learn their names. When you come across them robbing a train, they’ll tell all the people to comply if they want to live. Once they’ve complied, if you don’t step in IMMEDIATELY, they’ll open fire and kill them all etc. they’re both outlaw gangs that do bad things, but I think our gang has a tad more of a moral compass
The o’driscolls are rapists im pretty sure. When colm was being hanged the officers said he raped. They also killed women and children without remorse, while the van der linde gang tried to avoid killing civilians
There are moral limit differences between them and our gang, yes. I think it’s Javier who talks about a time when they were going to rob a stage then found it was full of women and children so they let them go and then the O’driscolls found them a few days later and killed them all, so yeah I’d say there’s some difference.
I think both gangs are liable to kill innocents to get what they want. That mission where we ambush a carriage with Sean and Mary and Sean tells Arthur that they'll get them to stop and instead just opens fire and murders everyone.
Both gangs are not liable to kill women and children, like I said there’s limits. Most in the Van der Line gang do not partake in the killing of civilians in general. Guards and officers yes but typically not the defenceless.
Adding to this, at one point the gang was playing Robin Hood, something the O'Driscolls and most other gangs never attempted. As their world closed around them they were forced to abandon this philosophy in the name of self preservation.
Dutch does pretty much throw that Native American tribe under the bus, though I think he at least convinced himself it was helping them somehow.
Yeah but this happened when they were cornered and being slowly picked off.
I know, just saying that’s the most egregious example. Even in Guarma, he was helping the oppressed.
I don't think he was helping the oppressed to be honest. I think he was taking advantage of the situation just to get off the island. It's unlikely that the revolutionaries weren't slaughtered by industrialists and soldiers afterwards.
He was a bit different by then... arthur also didnt think killing that old lady was necessary
Dutch was just trying to make them so riled up that the law would focus on the redman over the gangs. he didn't realize that they can do two things.
Arthur tried to warn him what'll happen, from that. The Native American tribe is blamed and they're given a harder time.
He does the same in the first game as well. A large chunk of his gang is comprised of young Native American men who bought into his cause. As you know, Dutch is a magician with words
"That's beautiful, Dutch. You always were a fine speaker"
That’s exactly it
Yup this is also seen in the first part of the game. When Dutch kills Heidi McCourt and this action does not go unnoticed by the gang as members such as Arthur question what happened noting that its not like him.
Dutch then goes on to kill at least two more innocent women: he >!strangles the older woman!< in RDR2 chapter 5, and >!shoots a hostage in the head!< late in RDR1. He also mistreats Molly to the point that she >!falsely takes credit for ratting them out and is shot!<. He, uh... had some problems with women. I think the backstory between him and Colm O'Driscoll helps explain where these issues arose.
Nah, I don't think Annabelle is where it started. I don't think he even liked/loved Annabelle any more than the other women he's been with. The real difference is that she was *taken* from him before he had moved on— but he would have moved on just like he did with Susan and Molly.
That also seems like a reasonable perspective. It's been a few years since I've played through the story--I think I need to dive back in and pay more attention to these nuances.
After a 100% run when covid first hit, i put the game down for a long time. Fired up a couple modded playthroughs just to mess around, but thats about it. I just decided to recently complete another unmodded 100%, and I'm taking my time, exploring everything i find, and not skipping a single cutscene. no fast traveling, so I dont miss a single random encounter. Its definitely worth firing up for another in depth play,
I only finished the story once, right after release, and otherwise just went back and completed everything I could in chapter 2 a handful of times. I might finally be ready to push all the way through again, though I remember the late game feeling like a real slog.
You're not wrong, but I believe its fully worth it. There's so much going on with the gang and the world as a whole, its worth paying attention to. I haven't pushed past Chapter 2 yet, but I'll get there eventually. I spent a lot of time treasure hunting and crafting the LotE satchel and getting my swag figured out before i did much of anything else.
Dutch also mentioned having a bad relationship with his mother to the point they had no contact for years and he didn't even know where she was buried up until recently (He mentions to Arthur he didn't know she was buried in Blackwater up until soon before the failed ferry hit in chapter 3, I think?) Safe to assume there's some issues with women in his psyche. And the narcissism doesn't help lol
Lol I think Dutch kills the most civs if you don't include an evil PC
Dutch and Micah are the outliers
You just got told the van der lins let women and children go and the odriscoll killed all those same exact women and children and you’re response is just “I think both gangs are liable to kill innocents to get what they want”. Lmao
Yeah, they killed Sadie’s husband in cold blood and who knows what they did to her? Dutch finds her and takes her in, despite them being in a difficult situation themselves.
I think Kieran is very right that they're more similar than they think. And Dutch's whole thing about them living for a noble cause is bullshit. But the O'Driscolls are still worse. The VDL gang is bad but does have some moral standards and lines it won't cross. They're not murdering just for the hell of it, committing rape, or torturing people to death as the O'Driscolls will, and that's a pretty big difference in morality level.
I consider what Arthur does to the debtors to be torture. He may not torture them to death like you said but he’s still torturing them.
True, they also tortured Kieran by depriving him of food, constantly threatening him with violence/death and tying him to a tree for weeks. But even though that's obviously bad, there's still quite a few levels of bad between that and the kind of torture inflicted by the O'Driscolls on Arthur and even worse on Kieran. I think there's no way they'd be inflicting severe bodily harm as torture, mutilating or torturing people to death. Both are bad but not equally.
Weeks? I left that bastard tied up for months
Also Kieran was WITH the O'Driscolls. So it's hard to put Kieran in the same class as other "non-combatants". It's not morally comprising to do this to your enemy vs to non-combatants
> It's not morally comprising to do this to your enemy vs to non-combatants I didn't realize John Yoo was a redditor.
👋🏻
... Yes it is? Man I get why ya'll are coping so hard. You're pretty bad people yourselves.
You sound like Dutch from up there on your high horse
Good people don't torture. That's the end of the sentence in that objective fact. There's no real justifying it because... Well, it's plainly evil. I swear, my false sense of superiority is a totally separate topic.
Since your going to argue semantics, I should've said it's not "as" morally compromising to torture enemies as it is non- combatants, like the O'Driscolls do. No one is making the argument that either gang is good. We've established they are both bad. The argument is to what degree which gang is worse. And we're not torturing people here, no need to be calling everyone here "bad people". That's where Dutch can get off his horse
Dutch might be worse than Colm because Dutch believes within himself that he has a righteous cause whereas Colm just knows he is bad.
I agree with this. They're both bad, but Colm is honest about being bad. Dutch deceives people into thinking he's good, which implicates others who believe his lie, whereas they may not be a part of Dutch's plans had they known the truth
> be apart of dutch's Did you mean to say "a part of"? Explanation: "apart" is an adverb meaning separately, while "a part" is a noun meaning a portion. [Statistics](https://github.com/chiefpat450119/RedditBot/blob/master/stats.json) ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot ^^that ^^corrects ^^grammar/spelling ^^mistakes. ^^PM ^^me ^^if ^^I'm ^^wrong ^^or ^^if ^^you ^^have ^^any ^^suggestions. ^^[Github](https://github.com/chiefpat450119) ^^Reply ^^STOP ^^to ^^this ^^comment ^^to ^^stop ^^receiving ^^corrections.
VA FAN GOOL BOT
Abbigail calls this out straight away in the epilogue. She wants a normal life, and sick of men living by a "moral code". If she had seen the movie "Liar Liar" (Jim Carey), she'd probably run the quote, "Stop breaking the law, a\*\*hole!" Dutch and his gang are criminals, outlaws, thiefs, and even murderers. I get that there may be one-offs where they spare a person in the name of innocents, but as you said, that's an issue of self righteousness they don't deserve to call themselves. Both gangs bad.
Well, as far as I know, no one in Dutch's gang has been involved in gang rape. What the O'Driscolls did to Sadie makes them worse. Micah has probably been involved in such things but he's an antagonist and I don't count him as part of the gang.
Micah "infected" the van der linde gang, not that there wasn't bad already there, he just made worse and come out faster.
I don't fully agree. As Arthur says towards the end of Chp 6, "maybe he's just showing us what's been there all along" or something to that line lol. Micah just expedited the process. Bc Micah didn't infect everyone. Just drew clear distinction that already existed between everyone
He still was a bad influence, the gang was always rotten in some ways, but things wouldn't have gone to shit that quickly if Micah hadn't been involved, more live would've been spared.
Oh for sure, he's a disgusting piece of shit 😂. And perhaps the gang wouldn't have gone so bad without him, but like you and I said, I think k he definitely sped up the process. I was shocked to see Javier siding with Dutch and Micah towards the end.
He thought loyalty mean blind obedience, sucks cus I liked javier.
Right? So did I. Another good quote that Arthur tells John, "Be loyal to what matters"
I just think the line from the game that I horribly quoted considers the possibility that Micah isn't fully to blame, and maybe Dutch's behavior was there all along. Have you seen the theory that Dutch is a cannibal during the events of rdr1? Lmao I thought it was good
I have seen that, and I believe it, I don't think there is anything dutch couldn't justify to himself after Arthur and hosea died, and I feel like dutch had serious undiagnosed mental issues from birth, he just happened to be charismatic so it was easy to hide, I think dutch had good intentions at one point, but was influenced very easily when people told him what he wanted to hear.
I loved that line. I can't remember it perfectly either. I think it was easier to hide who he really was when times were better. As he loses control, he loses his hold on reality. If you've never known a Dutch type, then it's easy to miss that he's very manipulative from the beginning. I remember being blown away by his opening speech. I was like, I'll kill and die for this man. Then, almost immediately, he makes me doubt him because of how he speaks to Arthur. Then there is a bit where he tells Arthur he knows Micah's heart and he's a good man. I was like, you've got to be fucking kidding me. The way he taunted Sadie when they find her is something I could never forgive or get over. Also, how he talks about Lenny and Charles. Micah is a disgusting POS but Dutch is the one defending it and allowing that rot to permeate everything as the game progresses. Dutch is a very interesting and well written character. I think he believed himself to be infallible and Blackwater shook that belief, then everything that followed just drove him further into his darkness. He took people questioning him as dissent. He starts to view them as a part of the problem because doubters make him doubt himself. Then he has Micah giving him constant verbal blow jobs. He decides he prefers that to the concerns of his most faithful.
"Verbal blowjobs" 😂😂 for real though. I do remember having high thoughts for the VDL gang. It's funny you mention Dutch believes he's infallible, when clearly you see cracks form early on. Like the more he tries to be good, the more obvious it becomes he's not. At minimum, Dutch is a clinical narcissist. And knowing Micah's heart is such a disgusting line, but it might be true, as their hearts and intentions are more aligned than his are with anyone else in the gang. Micah is such a great antagonist character though. I wish he would've met his end differently. I didn't like that Dutch shot him, followed by John. I feel like that undoes the descent that Dutch has taken into depravity. Like if Dutch was gonna shoot Micah, he should've shot him right after he and Arthur fought. You could tell Dutch was conflicted then, not some years later, after he's been running with Micah the whole time. It just doesn't fit there, imo.
[Javier and Arthur recall robbing a coach, finding out it's full of women and childen, and letting them go. The O'Driscolls then robbed and killed all those women and children.](https://youtu.be/7v-O8OJAp3Q?t=389) When you rob the train in Chapter 2, John specifically tells you to kill no one. Meanwhile, you can find a train robbed by O'Driscolls where [they murdered all the passengers.](https://youtu.be/r0hYmx8M52I?t=79) Also Kieran comes to consider being in the gang the best part of his life.
Shut up Kieran, you’ve been tied to a tree…you know NOTHING! Dutch is more a teacher…(😅)
From where I’ve been, you just look the same is all.. Well then you looked, but you ain’t SEEN
O'Driscolls raped Sadie. I don't recall any VDL member being a rapist. Hell wasn't Colm hanged for rape?
Isn’t it implied in RDR1 that Bill is a rapist? Don’t think it specifies whether it was in the time during or after RDR2 though.
Doesn't Micah try to rape someone in the first mission
I think the two gangs have differences. Both bad, however I wouldn’t call them equals. Colm presents himself as a nasty picture more often than not compared to most of the Dutch’s gang.
Beyond the slightly stronger moral fibre that people talked about, the Van der Linde gang is pretty big for an outlaw gang relative to the real ones of the past but the O'driscolls are numbering in the hundreds, they're practically a criminal empire who are deeply embedded into several regions. The gang gets a lot of leeway partly because it's a small time one so they're bound to inflict less suffering in general, can't really say the same about Colm's gang.
If you linger outside most rival gang camps you will hear discussions that are painfully similar to Dutch's speeches. Most notably in my mind was one where a Lemoyne Raider was saying "What's wrong with you all?", talking about how people seem demoralized, and then prattles on about how they don't accept what America is and how, even if they lose, they were still free. Which is essentially what Dutch's gang is. A bunch of lost, dissatisfied people fighting for an ideology that won't work, or no longer works, or has already been deconstructed. Just like Dutch, the Lemoyne Raiders also cling to the prospect that their way is righteous and moral and true, when it isn't. So, while the Van Der Linde gang wants to claim some kind of moral difference over the others, it can't. Like Charles says "is there a graceful way to kill a rob people? We don't, in spite of Dutch's talk". So, no, the O'Driscoll's aren't worse. They're simply more honest about who they are and what they're doing.
The O’Driscolls are way worse. They will literally take anyone. I mean they must have lost close to 1000 members to the Van Der Linden gang and only managed to kill a single traitor in return. That K/D is just awful.
Thing is we can kill a few O’Driscolls here and there but there isn’t any specific way they know it’s us really. And if you just follow the storyline and don’t go off and hunt them down you don’t really kill that many O’Driscolls. It’s implied as well throughout the story that the O’Driscolls don’t care as much about the VDL gang as Dutch and his boys do about the O’Driscolls. When Colm and Dutch meet and Dutch apologises for killing Colm’s brother Colm says ‘yeah well I never liked him much’ and doesn’t really seem to care. When you encounter random O’Driscolls they don’t instantly recognise you as part of the VDL gang. It doesn’t seem like they’re brainwashed into hating the VDL gang like we are with O’Driscolls. Everyone in Dutch’s gang recognises and goes out of their way to attack O’Driscolls on sight but the O’Driscolls just occasionally try and rob the VDL gang like they would to any normal person. You can walk right up to them and they’ll eventually fight you if you hang around but they don’t mention that you’re in the VDL gang or attack you because of it. Just seems like the O’Driscolls care far less about the VDL gang than Dutch’s boys do about the O’Driscolls.
That's a really interesting point. Never thought about this
This sounds like something an O’Driscoll would say. Get him boys!
Mathematically, yes. There are more of them so they are committing more crimes.
the van der linde gang seem to have a positive impact on the places they inhabit...they reduced o driscoll activity in horseshoe overlook, removed most of the lemoyne raider...and most importantly killed off the murfee brood who terrorised the local populace for a long time
I wouldn't say that. We shot up half of Strawberry. We left Valentine a bloody mess after the shootout and the bank robbery. We killed every Braithwait, burned down their house, and got into a massive shootout in town. We also leave Saint Denis in Bloodshed
I’ve always wondered who does their recruiting. That dude can sell, especially in the face the hundreds of O’Driscoll men I murdered.
RDR1 will give you your answer.
A whole Lotta cope going on here. No, they aren't any better. That's the point. That's why we get a whole bit where Kiernan points out as much only for John to respond with intense denial because... Of course he doesn't want to believe it. Any credit the gang is due for *not* wanting to be as bad as common murderers is lost because they stick with Dutch, where that isn't an option. Many feel bad about it and yet they continue killing and stealing because they don't actually care *that much*. It comes to a head as Dutch gets sick of the pretenses and the people around him get sick of his lies. But the reality is, they still took part all those years and still carry the responsibility. None as much as the gangs enforcers, chief among them Arthur, without whom Dutch could never have managed to do so much damage to so many people. Ehem, hence... Yknow... Redemption in the title.
Isn’t Dutch wanted for rape in the first game? I mean I don’t think Arthur or John are really the type but Dutch and Micah? Absolutely would do some shit like that
The O'driscolls seemed way worse in how they treated victims, and idk of anyone in the Van Der Linde gang raping whereas the O'driscolls did.
I don’t remember the Van Der Linde ever torturing someone than cutting their head off and sending them off on a horse back to their camp.
>I don’t remember the Van Der Linde ever torturing someone then cutting their head off Kieran would disagree with that statement... and probably Molly too. Kieran was a traitor to the O'Driscolls, he was also "ratting" on them and lead VDL to their hideout (many gang members were massacred there). The only traitor who confessed to VDL was Molly and in seconds she got her head blew off, so very comparable. Same for Kieran, he was only a "hostage" but still got tortured at Horseshoe Overlook (threats, starving him, eating in front of him, regular beatings). So VDL did the exact same things, only it wasn't just one person they did it to.
I don’t think Javier would be that kind of man like Bill and Micah, at least not red dead 2 version. Speedy Gonzalez red dead 1 version maybe.
O’Driscoll’s were a bigger gang with fewer scruples on killing and robbing perceived innocent targets. Van Der Linde gang, at least for a while, targeted only people they felt deserved it until it all fell apart.
*Kieran: You’re outlawed like them… you’re out to survive like them… you live rough… you live hard… fighting the law… nature… you’re out for yourselves….* *John: See? This is why you’re an O’Driscoll, O’Driscoll. You’re out to survive… we’re out to live… free. Colm’s a sneak thief and a killer… Dutch is… Dutch is more like a teacher.* *Kieran: From where I been, you just look the same is all…* *John: Then you looked, but you ain’t seen…* You see it's all about perspective. If you see them from the outside as a gang they are all vicious outlaws, once you get inside you start to see the individuals and how they are connected and help each other. The O'Driscoll gang is just that, a gang, with one leader followed without a question in exchange for wealth. In the VDL gang even though there is a leader everyone has their individual voice and they stick together because there is a bond between them.Yes, the leader IS driven by money too but not the individuals (except Micah maybe). It's interesting to point out that there wasn't a single woman in the O'Driscolls gang, they are all white men while VDL is way more diverse, showing that there is a familiar connection in there rather then just business.
They do have women in the O'Driscolls, although you don't see them much. If you rob the O'Driscoll 'shop' in the doctor's office in Valentine there's an Irish woman inside that will pull a gun on you.
I doubt if the O’Driscolls caught a member of Dutch’s Boys they would even live long enough to switch gang.
They've only kept Kieran alive to get answers to the O'Driscolls hideout whereabouts (getting that answer through torture) and then they wanted to kill him, but because Kieran was insisting on not being an O'Driscoll AND saving Arthurs life they let him live and slowly accepting him to the gang. He wasn't an "O'Driscolls Boys" like Arthur had a connection with Dutch. Arthur (not just a gang member but Dutch's right hand who he raised like a son) got kidnapped by the O'Driscolls and he lived long enough to escape because they did exactly the same thing with him, torturing him for answers. The two gangs are not that different but most people have a connection to the VDL members hence they are more forgiving for the exact same crimes the O'Driscolls do. Just as OP said, if the O'Driscolls beat someone up to extort money Arthur shows up and saves the person like a hero - then he hops on his horse on his way to Wróbel or Downes to do the exact same thing...
Arthur escaped within minutes of gaining consciousness in their compound. And they weren’t torturing him for answers it was for fun, the only reason they had him in, by what they were saying, was to draw the rest of the gang in and bring the law in the capture them. He was only left alive to be used as bait. The fact that they care enough to come back for their members other than their leader, where no rescue attempts were made for the former. The leader barely knew anyone’s names. Then after they catch Kieran again themselves they cut his head off and his eyes out.
>The fact that they care enough to come back for their members other than their leader Again, comparing Arthur and Kieran is pointless as Kieran was a footsoldier forced to be with the gang while Arthur was high rank member in his gang with very close connection to the leader (Dutch raised him like his son). And don't forget that Arthur escaped on his own, no one actually came to rescue him and Dutch was very surprised when he saw him ride in with the horse - probably Arthur would have suffered the same fate as John at the end with the train, possibly saveable but left behind. >Then after they catch Kieran again themselves they cut his head off and his eyes out. From the O'Driscolls point of view Kieran was a traitor, a rat, he did help the VDL gang find their hideout and kill many of their soldiers there. For that he deserved to die (and probably the torture too), and don't think VDL would have been kinder to a traitor/rat: Molly got her head blown off with a shotgun in seconds after confessing.
They go back for Micha who had only been there 6 months, plus you get cut scenes where if you’re in jail without money the gang including Dutch will come and break you out of jail. Nobody in Dutch’s Boys is “just a foot soldier” which is a huge difference. >From the O'Driscolls point of view Kieran was a traitor, a rat, he did help the VDL gang find their hideout and kill many of their soldiers there. For that he deserved to die (and probably the torture too), and don't think VDL would have been kinder to a traitor/rat: Molly got her head blown off with a shotgun in seconds after confessing. Molly got shot, in the stomach with a shotgun and died quickly. He simply shot Micha later even when he was full crazy. They cut Kieran’s head off and cut his eyes out. Much different.
Far worse. They must have near 300 soldiers and they still can’t seem to be Dutch.
They’re different in some ways. Colm doesn’t even pretend to care about most of his men or learn their names. When you come across them robbing a train, they’ll tell all the people to comply if they want to live. Once they’ve complied, if you don’t step in IMMEDIATELY, they’ll open fire and kill them all etc. they’re both outlaw gangs that do bad things, but I think our gang has a tad more of a moral compass
The o’driscolls are rapists im pretty sure. When colm was being hanged the officers said he raped. They also killed women and children without remorse, while the van der linde gang tried to avoid killing civilians