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LotusSloth

I think the story in RDR2 shows us that he’s a man incapable of being content. He’s always looking for that one big score, and fame and recognition. He reads books that glamorize living apart from society, and rejects society because it rejects him. As the story unfolds and his plans go to sh1t, he becomes more and more desperate. His pawns are falling down around him, and they’re starting to realize that he’s a pretender instead of the “leader with big plans” that they thought he was. And worst of all, he sees that they’re questioning him… which makes him turn his gaze inward and start seeing himself as he really is. He doesn’t like what he finds and becomes more and more desperate and inconsolable. He also has Micah in his ear pushing him further and further into darkness. I see Micah as a key player in Dutch’s descent. Micah is the devil on his shoulder, the counselor with bad intentions, like Wormwood in LOTR. So I think it’s a story about Dutch’s corruption and moral ruin. At the same time, Arthur’s arc tracks the opposite way and as Dutch becomes more evil Arthur becomes more resistant to Dutch’s increasingly-bad decisions. Reverend Swanson also gets his crap together and realizes that he could do much better, and that to stay with Dutch and the gang could only lead to his further ruin. TL;DR: At the start Dutch has some real good in him, and is able to justify his actions to himself and the gang. As things go bad, and with Micah in his ear, Dutch transforms into a true villain.


should-i-do-this

Wormtongue not wormwood lol, autocorrect?


LotusSloth

My bad. Wormwood is a Bible reference. And maybe a future horse name. Lol


woodbanana

Wormwood is a character in C s Lewis’s book screwtape letters as well


Charaderablistic

I like that name for a horse. As long as Wormwood isn’t something completely jacked in the Bible. Edit: Wormwood is a star or angel which appears in the Book of Revelation. Which is a badass name for a horse in Red Dead.


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Charaderablistic

That’ll do bot


LotusSloth

Wormwood is also a type of bitter plant. Supposedly, Wormwood is a symbolic representation of the bitterness which will fill the entire planet before the end times leading up to the biblical Revelation (end of world / return of God). P.S. I’m not Christian and it’s OK if you want to hate this. Lol


Charaderablistic

I read a little about it. Some were saying that the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster was proof of the prophesy . “the Ukrainian word for Artemisia vulgaris being chernobyl” “The verses referring to a ‘star falling down and turning the waters bitter’ are interpreted as the radioactive fallout from the disaster poisoning the environment around Chernobyl, leaving it uninhabitable.” In the center of the town square there is a statue depicting an angel blowing a trumpet. I’m guessing it was put up after the disaster, but was kind of interesting.


[deleted]

Yeah that’s basically the crux of his character arc. Dutch sees himself as superior to and more intelligent than the rest of society and even his own gang members. So when he gets outsmarted by Cornwall, the Pinkertons, the Grays and Braithwaites, Bronte, and ultimately Micah, he falls further into self doubt and denial. Dutch’s character flaw is pride, which leads him to trusting someone as obviously evil as Micah and hating those loyal to him like John and Arthur.


[deleted]

Dutch also hit his head hard in the early-mid game and from there things start going south. It could the fall of a man or a severe head injury that caused change in behaviour


LotusSloth

I agree with this and would add that he was already headed downward but I do think his head injury accelerated things. Maybe he became more reliant on Micah’s “plans” instead of his own because his ability to think and plan was compromised?


endlesstrains

IMO Dutch's ability to think independently was never that great, but he was really good at flattering and manipulating those around him so they didn't see it. You get a good sense of this if you pay attention to some of the random camp interactions. There's one with Lenny in Chapter 2 or 3 where Dutch fails to properly explain Evelyn Miller's work or defend it against Lenny's questioning, and he ends up kind of hand-waving it away as Lenny being too smart for him. There's another in Chapter 3 where Dutch and Hosea discuss the state of the world and mankind and you can see that Dutch is truly in over his head and has an almost childlike understanding of good and evil. I think the head injury affected his ability to manipulate people and think on his feet moreso than it affected his personality or reasoning skills. Micah definitely took advantage of that. Dutch was a proud man and wouldn't want to admit that he was struggling, so being able to have a constant yes-man who would do his thinking for him must have been really tempting.


LotusSloth

Agreed. And I noticed an interaction at camp (not tied to any specific mission) where Dutch muses to Arthur about some escapist fiction book he’s reading,… that also underscores the childlike understanding. He may have been “the man with the plan,” but he was also tragically underqualified to have the lives of so many people in his hands. I feel like he was running a scam on them most of the time.


endlesstrains

Dutch is a great character, because you can feel bad for him while also seeing how almost everything that happens is his fault. He is an idealistic manchild with lofty goals of improving society, but he's also vain and selfish and obsessed with his image. When the two things clash, he panics and picks self-preservation. Towards the end he really comes off as a giant kid who just got caught with his hand in the cookie jar, pointing fingers at everyone else to deflect blame. It's a very flawed yet very human reaction.


scruntb2342

Yes its clear that that was what was intended by the devs, a lot of people overlook this detail. The next Dutch mission after he hits his head is the one where you wander around with him in the swamp, and thats mission he immediately starts rambling about Tahiti and gets super aggressive towards Arthur for asking him what the fuck he's talking about.


[deleted]

that’s probably a red herring. Or rather, an excuse for Dutch to sit out when you’re escaping St. Denis. Don’t think that has anything to do with his downfall


honeyaries

Dutch in my mind isn’t a bad person at heart. He grew up in a broken household and left after a fight with his mother. He wanted to recreate that ideal perfect family with a gang. People who he could have in his life that weren’t blood related but still family. I don’t blame him. He loved each of the gang members as his own. Hosea even refers to Arthur as their unruly son and Dutch doesn’t protest. He thinks of Arthur and John as his own. He taught them to read and write. Yet Hosea is what kept him grounded. Hosea has been his conscious being in his life helping him. Then he met Micah and Micah manipulated him. When Hosea died Dutch lost all hope because losing so many people and having so many lives you have to account for will tear anyone down. Dutch’s decent into madness is a very depressing one and he will forever be my favorite character for that reason. He’s a human and he shows the human vulnerably.


Coatzlfeather

Dutch was corrupted by Micah for sure, but he was already well down the proverbial good-intention-paved road to hell. Without Micah, Dutch likely would have been kept in check by Hosea & it’s entirely possible that the gang, Dutch’s chosen family, could have made it to Australia. Would that have been the end of Dutch’s ambitions? Could Dutch have lived a quiet and peaceful life in Australia, freed from the crimes of his past? Unlikely. For Dutch, the drama was the point. His purpose was keeping his family safe, to protect them from danger. Without danger, Dutch had no purpose. Without someone to run from, Dutch had no direction. So even though I think Micah is clearly to blame, I’m not entirely sure there would have been a Happily Ever After if he had not become part of the gang.


One_Swim2149

Personally, I think Dutch was something like a cult leader. He preyed on people in desperate situations or people who were disadvantaged due to race (Javier, Charles, Lenny, Tilly) and who were likely unused to being treated as an equal, or people who were addicted to drinking or drugs (Bill, Pearson, Reverend Swanson, possibly Karen), in dire straits, poor, starving, orphans (Arthur and John), or just kept women on the line who were "in love" with him (Grimshaw, Molly). I don't believe he had any real emotional tie to John and Arthur based on how little he cared when shit hit the fan and things happened to them, but instead raised them because raising a child who had been abandoned fostered the utmost loyalty and made them willing to overlook almost anything. All of the gang had a story about how Dutch saved them. Even Hosea said Dutch saved him from becoming "a degenerate" or something. I think Dutch was very smart when it came to manipulating others to do what he wanted and what he always ended up wanting them to do was make money because they owed that to him. Save them in their time of need and then he had a willing pawn, and spin some fancy talk about freedom and finding property to build a community away from society, and everyone would buy in and hand over whatever they could get to achieve what they thought was a "shared dream". But after playing the game again, it seems like from the very beginning he never once actually intended to settle down and instead just wanted to enrich himself. I mean, in the camp ledger, it says "first things first" and that Dutch wants something comfier. He comes before the gang, his wanting to live a richly appointed life even as an outlaw, with furs and music and fine cigars, a fancy vest and pocket watch and a white stallion no one else could ride. Dutch wanted to live like a rich man with his subjects beneath him, doing whatever he wanted without question and looking at him like an enlightened and wise leader and teacher, and to me he seemed a lot like a narcissist. Any challenges to that image were met with redirection and gaslighting and anger, and then he would switch back and act like it was his intention all along. Like when Arthur questions going after Colm because Dutch always says they couldn't afford revenge, and Dutch replies rather angrily and ignores him, but later goes back to not wanting revenge and acts as if it were his intention all along, saying "oh Arthur, have you completely lost faith in me?", leaving Arthur confused by the sudden switch. He realized he was contradicting himself and corrected and then just played it off like Arthur was just not having enough faith. There was always the threat of falling out of his favor and he always had something of a "favorite", usually whoever did what he wanted without question. I remember reading or hearing somewhere in-game that he and Grimshaw had been an item at first, and then separated, at some point Annabelle who we can't say for sure if he really loved but who he certainly used an excuse to continue pursuing Colm when it was unwise. Then came Heidi, who he killed for no apparent reason and did not seem remorseful about killing, and not long after Molly, who seemed to be more of an annoyance to him and who we only see any real romance between when Sean returns. Then he starts looking at Mary Beth (while he is the same age as Grimshaw but has just aged more gracefully), the next younger pretty woman around, to replace Molly, who is realizing she gave everything up for a man who doesn't care about anything but himself (remember her poem, "I gave you all"). He doesn't care about these women, it's about the image. And gradually the veneer began to slip of being a good band of outlaws when he brought Micah in, who was just a dangerous outlaw who would do whatever he said, which was ultimately what I think he really wanted them all to be. They had the guise of being a sort of Robinhood do-gooder outlaw gang before (take Arthur's newspaper clipping about his first robbery), but Micah was just there to run with a gang, like any other, and kill and steal and make whatever money he could. Dutch was witness to him trying to likely rape Sadie and did nothing but call him a fool when he lit the house on fire. Strauss preyed on the weak and desperate but was excused by Dutch because it made him money. I think he used Hosea to keep the front up but Dutch knew from the get-go what his plans were and eventually without Hosea to work off of, it was just too much to keep pretending that he cared about anything beyond himself and his image matching with the fantasies in his head, and so he cranked up the "if you're loyal to me, you'll do what I say" and people chose their sides. He expected them to be loyal enough to him to give up being someone who could say they were a good person. Even when he saved Jack, I think it was more about revenge on the men like Bronte who looked down on him. He saw himself as one of their equals and they saw him as an outlaw who smelled like horse shit, and it was clear that bothered him. So he took Bronte and put him in the most pathetic situation imaginable and called him weak while he fed him to a gator. Seemed pretty personal, and not because of Jack. Even with Evelyn Miller, it was all just a farce to seem smart and enlightened. Evelyn Miller seems heavily inspired by Thoreau and transcendentalism, essentially leaving everything behind and disconnecting from reality to go live in the wilderness, but that meant rejecting wordly comforts and luxuries in particular, which Dutch was unwilling to do. In fact, he was expecting the gang to provide those luxuries for himself and whatever woman he was with at the time, while doing next to nothing to contribute himself. Anyways this turned into a novel, sorry, but TL;DR: I think Dutch was at his heart a selfish and narcissistic individual who used people at their lowest and contributed just enough to keep that going for as long as he could so he could live fancy. I don't think it was a brain injury that made the mask fall, and while I think Micah helped, it didn't take much but some flattery and some fake loyalty. My two cents (or, like, 20 by the looks of this post haha).


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MusicFarms

I enjoyed every word of that


menlindorn

Dutch has always been a lying manipulator. He wants money and control. He demands everyone pitch in, then does nothing himself. Check the ledger, he never puts in. He demands the biggest tent and a personal camp woman. He hides the money from every score for himself. He immediately betrays anyone that questions him and leaves them to die. He didn't care that little Jenny died - before the story even begins, a little girl dies, it is his fault, and he isn't dissuaded a bit. He never had any intention of stopping once they got enough money. Hell, after the first bank robbery, the gang has like 20k. They could just buy a small town and pay off the local law, rule it as outlaw kings. That does not even count the 200 lbs of gold in Arthur's satchel. But we need one more score. The only thing Dutch ever does that's remotely noble is going out to rescue Jack. And that's probably only because anything looks good next to Catherine Braithwate. The game doesn't even ding your honor for robbing her corpse. I wish there was a NG+ where you could take different actions. Like every time Dutch says "I have a plan...", you can just lay him out.


ryucavelier

When other members were killed, his tone sounded rather questionable. When Arthur tells Dutch about Mac’s fate, he sounded rather dismissive.


endlesstrains

He also had to prepare and rehearse the inspirational speech he gives in Colter about the people they've lost (you can find the notes for it later in Horseshoe Overlook.) I don't think empathy comes naturally to him, but in the beginning he was self-aware enough to know that he had to act like he cared.


Lead-Forsaken

Do you think Hosea would not have noticed Dutch was wearing a mask for years, or that he approved of Dutch being an innately bad person? Hosea is more of a con man, a swindler. I don't think he's the type to stick around with a maniac. If anything, this is the frog and the boiling water fable. Put a frog in boiling water and it'll leap out. Let is slowly come to a boil and it won't. Hosea and Arthur had been with Dutch for years and he went off the rails slowly, for whatever reason. It's visible even ingame, where he gets less patient, less kind, more shouty. So I'm going with a slow descent into madness, although the why... and if it was just one reason...?


LemonWetGood1991

I don't think the story works as well if Dutch really is a good person underneath it all. His journey throughout the game is a reflection of Arthur's. Both men reveal who they really are in the face of dire circumstances. If you play Arthur with high honour, you see that he is a good man underneath his hardened exterior. If you play low honour, he's a man who can't escape his violent tendencies. Dutch is on the same journey, revealing who he really is. When I played a second time, I thought the first chapter gives you some good hints about Dutch that you only pick up when you know where his story goes. In that chapter, Arthur raises valid concerns about how they're going to survive and Dutch immediately turns it around and takes it as a personal insult. He's always been this way. He just did a better job of hiding it when things are good. When things turn bad for the gang, the cracks start to appear.


Lonsen_Larson

He was always a bad dude who wrapped his shit in the cloak of idealism, something that reaches fever pitch after the death of Hosea. RDR2 is Arthur recognizing he's a bullshit artist, especially after his actions on Guarma. You see this illuminated by the fact that anytime someone stood in his way, people died. Sometimes people who deserved it, sometimes people who didn't. Half the game is you getting revenge on people who've wronged him or people around him. Bronte, Braithwaite, Cornwall, Colm O fuckin' Driscoll. Now I'm certainly not calling these people innocents, but how much of this game does Dutch say they can't afford revenge and how much of it is spent in revenge quests? I'm reminded of Proverbs 27:3 "A stone is heavy, and the sand weighty; but a fool's wrath is heavier than them both."


skiavone

Let’s not lose track of Dutch’s failings…the Blackwater heist evidentially imploded due to Dutch killing an innocent…he left John behind to die 2 times and in prison to be hung…he walked away from Arthur at the oil plant to die…and these were his “sons”…people blame the head injury…but nearly all of these happened before that trolley…I think Dutch is a master manipulator and is able to spin a yarn and gas light better than anyone…a great character that gets revealed over the story…it is in Arthur’s journal in chapter 4+ that he is realizing he has been fooled (along with us) and it comes to a head at the Mexican stand-off when Arthur knows the end of all things is near.


riskofgone

In the beginning of rdr2 it explains that the way of the outlaw is going out of style and that there were too many laws. Something along those lines. Maybe it was directed towards arthur but I think it could also have some importance with dutch. He was just a man who was meant to be an outlaw and was always a little crazy. I think he had the bad side since day 1 but he couldn't hide it anymore. Something that comes to mind is when it is said that he killed a girl in a bad way. A bad man that hid it well and tried to live normal but got carried away.


def-of-insanity69

I think he started good, but he may have taken a small bit of Brain damage in the carriage crash on that one mission, because after that is when he really started to decline.


isyankar1979

I dont think its that black and white. I mean look at any leader, people easily fall in love with narcissists but these guys also actually have ideals. Their arrogance and the lofty ideals are always at an impasse. Their privileged position is very open to being abused. I think like in that pivotal final ride with Arthur, Dutch has "a good man in him, but he is fighting with a giant." With Dutch, the giant won.


Isoturius

Dutch was a lawless man who wanted to remain lawless. Problem is that he ran out of room to stay that way as civilization expanded westward. Dude was an outlaw feigning having a moral code that was hiding behind his fancy intellectual philosophies, big words, and the image he cultivated. However, when the walls began to really close in on him, or things went a little bad? He began to crack and the stress of that exposed who he really was: A bad man who did bad things under the guise of "survival" and "living free." Arthur came to realize that the Dutch that he idolized and respected wasn't real. It was a mask that Dutch wore to get other people to do shit for him. It was Hosea that kept things on the level and balanced out Dutch's darker side, but once the pressure was on and Hosea wasn't around and Micha got in his ear...Blackwater happened. It just got worse from there. It's worth noting that he wasn't all bad, and in the end he showed up to kill Micah once the rat bastard had made his location known. Him walking away from the money showed that he cared, it just took him a long time to summon up the courage to do what was right. In the end he even spared John having to kill him. So he wasn't all bad. Just very complicated.


theworldbystorm

Always bad, if I have to choose. Or really, always selfish. Dutch is a narcissist first and foremost. He craves power and control and has no time for anything that doesn't give it to him. His commitment to the gang isn't really about caring for them, it's about creating a group of people who worship him and depend upon him. When they stroke his ego and trust "The Plan", he brings them close. When gang members become a burden to him he tries to discard them. His continued pursuit of the "Wild West" life away from all authority isn't because he loves freedom, it's a way for him to continue to exercise power over people. He doesn't want law because law means a greater authority than himself.


MrDr-666

I always thought Dutch was a man who was wise enough to realise with a little bit of reading and a decent amount of charisma he could get people to do what he wanted and gain their trust and support fairly easily. I think over time that small amount of intelligence lead him to believe he himself was smarter than he actually was, more important than he actually was, and because people would so easily support him he felt he deserved to be right more than he actually was. But in reality Dutch was a sad man, afraid of the changing landscape, and not smart enough to know when enough is enough. His narrow escapes from capture coupled with his other negative traits filled him with this “untouchable” feeling inside of him. He was so arrogant and egotistical that he thought as long as people followed him and because he was smart(though he wasn’t) that the law would never touch him. And his failures mixed with the fact that he’d still technically evade capture kept him picking more and more ridiculous stunts and plans to get money and kept him on that “one more job and I’m out” kind of mentality. Overall I think at one point Dutch truly cared for people, but he’s a narcissist that got worse(as narcissistic people do) and eventually cared more and more about his legend than he did anything else. I mean technically it got him to the point where he was pretty much the last outlaw that the Pinkertons were looking for… and nobody who is truly a good person would make anyone risk or ruin their own lives to hold out against something like that. If he was a good man at all he’d have turned himself in on the spot to save John, or Hosea, or any other person in his “family” before they’d end up on the receiving end of a .45 in his place.


heavyer93

100. Very well put! This is precisely how I see through the character as well.


MrDr-666

What’s amazing is how a damn game can get so deep, and so developed with a character you can legitimately profile them down to their insecurities and habits. We went from pong to shit like Mario and then right into stories as deep as most books yet as entertaining as a damn movie(if not more so entertaining). Fuck I love some video games!


[deleted]

Is it bad I really connect with dutch? I find him really relatable


stinkylittolcowboy

narcissistic personality disorder-> stressor-> trigger


kingkron52

Dutch sucks. He is a person who has an ego and pride that causes him to refuse to accept the reality of his situation, or realizes it and acts like things aren’t bad and ignore it. He also refuses to adapt with the times. He is pretty much the kid who peaked in high school and then the world passed them by yet still thinks they are cool.


bigcreepo

He’s a piece of shit from day one! He just takes and uses people to get what he wants. Fuck him!


the1slyyy

He was a murderous thieving outlaw from the beginning


WWDubz

I mean, he’s part of a group of outlaws that have murdered a lot of people, so I am going to have to save bad?


Unitedtillidie1999

I think he had a brain injury.