Red Dead Redemption 2 Failed To Show Dutch’s Glory Days

The original Red Dead Redemption follows John Marston as he hunts down his former gang members and their one-time leader, Dutch van der Linde. John speaks vaguely of the gang’s past, reflecting that it once stood for something before Dutch became unhinged and the gang fell apart. Some fans may have expected the prequel, Red Dead Redemption 2, to show those glory days, when the gang still aspired to change the world. RDR2 instead opted only to focus on the gang’s downfall, stretched over more than 60 hours of “one last jobs” and flights from the law.

As described in the first game by the federal agents holding John’s family hostage, the Van der Linde gang was, at one time, a socialist-leaning group of Robin Hood figures, robbing the rich to redistribute wealth to those in need. A moral code is mentioned at several points in RDR2, articulating that the gang would “rob who needs robbing, kill who needs killing, help who needs helping, and feed who needs feeding.” Whatever this code once meant is not shown in the prequel, however. Instead, the gang robs whoever makes an easy target and kills whoever stands in its way. Its members are generally only helpful to outsiders when there’s an ulterior motive, and in later parts of the story, the gang does not even help its own members.

The first Red Dead Redemption had a cynical view of each social structure it depicted and sent a message that human corruption makes every set of ideals flawed in the end. Instead of showing the breakdown of idealism, the prequel begins with a gang that is already beyond ideals, operating on pure desperation and survival. A robbery in Blackwater went poorly, leaving the gang on the run and with no aspirations to change the world – only the vague goal of securing enough money to buy a plot of land where its members can disappear and live out their lives peacefully. At the start of RDR2, the only ideal left to the gang is loyalty, and over the course of the game, even that erodes until it has nothing left.

Dutch’s Gang Has Moved From Idealism To Desperation In RDR2

None of the Van der Linde gang’s members seem to take their ideals seriously in RDR2. They recite their former code as an empty mantra, a reminder of what their goals once were. Protagonist Arthur Morgan operates based on a fierce bond of camaraderie with Dutch and the others, but Arthur holds no illusions of higher purpose. The gang is never depicted as an agent of change, only a community and a surrogate family desperately trying to survive. Many found this story powerful in and of itself, but it repeats the themes of the original game, wherein John is forced to take on “one last job” to secure the peace he has found for his own family.

There are a few moments in RDR2 when the story brushes against the ideals the gang once purportedly stood for, but it only hints at what could have been. When Dutch aids the Wapiti in their fight against the military, he does so largely to provide a smokescreen for the gang’s disappearance. When he strikes out against the cruel rulers of Guarma, it happens only because he and others were stranded there by chance. The Van der Linde gang is repeatedly witness to the corrupting influence of railroad tycoon and oil magnate Leviticus Cornwall: Cornwall’s desire to expand his business leads to the U.S. Army’s attempts to drive the Wapiti people from their land after oil is found there; he is connected to the human rights abuses on the island of Guarma; and he funds the Pinkerton Detective agency in their efforts to hunt the gang down. When Dutch kills Cornwall in the game’s Beaver Hollow chapter, he states it is the murder he least regrets committing, but it was more an act of revenge and convenience than a calculated move for social change.

Scenes where Dutch works against the corrupting influence of capitalism by chance, rather than by design, serve as sad reminder of the story Red Dead Redemption 2 could have been with just a bit of restructuring. Instead of beginning with the gang operating solely on survival, the player could have seen its efforts to change the world crash against the crushing reality of the power of money. Dutch could have viewed Cornwall as the embodiment of the corrupt “progress” he stood against. The journey to Guarma could have been an intentional act of liberation. An opening arc where the gang systematically works to dismantle Cornwall’s empire could have culminated in the tycoon’s murder; that would have served as a much more powerful turning point to desperation for the gang than Blackwater’s simple robbery gone wrong.

Red Dead Redemption 2 Had Time To Give The Gang A Proper Arc

Given the length of Red Dead Redemption 2’s playtime and its dozens of story missions, the game had ample opportunity to give the Van der Linde gang a dynamic arc. It could have shown the gang at the height of its idealism, built stakes and risks as it comes up against the embodiment of what it stands against, and then delved into the inevitable aftermath of a losing battle for survival. Instead, RDR2 simply stretched that losing battle across a series of redundant get-rich-quick schemes, devoid of any altruism towards society at large. Some might say that was the point, and in the story’s defense, its focus solely on themes of loyalty (rather than “distracting” with other themes) strengthens the feeling of familial connection between the gang’s characters.

With such ambitious scale and scope to RDR2’s world, it remains disappointing that it did not have any more ambition for its story. Red Dead Redemption 2 simply repeated the same themes of the first game – that loyalty to family sometimes pushes people to desperate and dangerous actions, that change is inevitable, and that the ways of the Old West were dying. Players are left to wonder if Dutch’s ideals ever meant anything at all, or if they were always empty rhetoric rationalizing banditry for the sake of personal profit and rebelliousness.

About The Author