Is it really a gang?

[The Holy Diver]

I found it bizarre how the Van Der Linde Gang is supposed to be a company that rivals the O’Driscolls, yet only have a total of nine active members in their ranks, not counting the passive one’s who stay at the camp. The O’Driscolls, on the other hand, seems more like a genuine criminal enterprise. Throughout the game, you cut through hundreds of nameless goons working for Colm O’Driscoll. Isn’t it rather peculiar that a group of nine active criminals, which functions more as a family unit than a gang, actually poses a threat to such a massive band out outlaws? 

 

In the first game, Dutch’s gang is supposedly a shadow of it’s former self. And yet, he has more manpower than he ever did during the old days, all of them fiercely loyal to him and ready to die at a moment’s notice. During John’s short period of time hunting him, he also takes down dozens, if not hundreds of Dutch’s new gang members. And don’t even get me stared on the fact that the dude has a f*cking fort, much unlike the measly little camps his original gang lived in. 

[saintsrow]

^Take care, sir. You're skating dangerously close to the discontinuous boundary between real logic and Rockstar logic, fraught with peril. No one ever returns from there.  You'll not find truth, but only confusion, frustration and the surest path to insanity and misery.  Heed my words.  

 

Edited November 24, 2018 by saintsrow

[Gray-Hand]

Well, the Van Der Linde Gang has at least two members in Arthur and John who have Dead Eye superpowers as well as the super human resilience which allows them to shrug off something like 10 close range gun shots, so it’s not as imbalanced as it seems at first glance.

[RyuNova]

Well a gang is just a group of people so yea.

 

I think that was the point as well. Dutch looks on Colm with scorn because he does not care about his Gang Members and treats them like faceless cannon fodder. He has no loyalty but Dutch in RDR does the same thing. It shows you how far he has fallen becoming the thing he hates.

[Nulla Lex Ink.]

It's touched upon a bit in the story. Dutch says Colm will take anybody who can hold a gun and shoot, and Kieran says Colm "goes through men like cigars." The O'Driscoll gang is just a bunch of roughnecks who only care about money, while Dutch's gang is more about ideals and loyalty to each other, which makes them function better as a unit despite their smaller number.

 

Basically, quality over quantity.

[Fidzy]

Basically what everyone else has said. Plus it's only a game so if they created 100 random people for Dutch's gang people would also be saying "why have they created this many people when there's no interaction or story to them?"

[Deadman2112]

I have to agree with all the replies to the OP. Well said.

 

It's a fictional story, and just like all the other works of fiction, it embellishes in an effort to make it more interesting, and it wouldn't be much of a story it they took one bullet and went down.

 

However, by the very logic of the game/story, the thing to keep in mind here is...

Each of the (gun slinger) members of the gang are elite gun fighters. Legends in there own right. Hence the reason they were recruited into this gang in the first place. Because of that I would have to assume that each of them are worth a 100 men respectively.

 

It's like what they said in GTA V. I think it was Dave or maybe Lester talking to Michael, and said something like...

"Sure it's easy to go up against a bunch of rookies cops, fresh out of the academy, still wet behind the ears and barely know how to handle a gun."

 

...The other gangs are a lot like that, and should be viewed as such.

 

and if that answer doesn't satisfy, then I'll fall back on what another member said...

It's game logic. Don't put to much thought into it or you just might end up like Alice and find yourself tumbling down the rabbit hole.

Watch the movie "Last Action Hero" and this should make more sense.

 

P.S. dig the name. I'm a fan of DIO

Edited November 24, 2018 by Deadman2112

[TheSantader25]

Here you can say Quality>Quantity. But Dutch gave up on this as well in RDR1 and went for quantity. 

[CrimsonFolo]

It's also suggested that Dutch's gang was bigger before RDR2 (You hear of like 4 people atleast who die at the start of the game or before the game starts) and it can be assumed that the gang was bigger before and they most likely quarreled with the O'Driscools multiple times before.

 

Dutch's gang has far more experience while O'Driscools are a buncha randoms. In a rpg perspective, O'Driscools would probably be like level 2 while Dutch's gang members like level 30+. 

 

In RDR1, Dutch has resorted to recruiting anyone who likes his cause, so he has a bunch of trash goons protecting him. He does have a good fort though but only one way in and one way out, unlike the other smaller camps in RDR2 which generally have more than one exit.

 

 

[Rykjeklut]

2 hours ago, Gray-Hand said:

Well, the Van Der Linde Gang has at least two members in Arthur and John who have Dead Eye superpowers as well as the super human resilience which allows them to shrug off something like 10 close range gun shots, so it’s not as imbalanced as it seems at first glance.

And Pearson is like a tiger with that knife.

[Lonely-Martin]

Aye, quality and trust over quantity for me. A good gang is like a family.

 

2 hours ago, saintsrow said:

^Take care, sir. You're skating dangerously close to the discontinuous boundary between real logic and Rockstar logic, fraught with peril. No one ever returns from there.  You'll not find truth, but only confusion, frustration and the surest path to insanity and misery.  Heed my words.  

Though, this is also so very true these days, lol.

[ProKiller93]

rockstar probably forgot

[Deadman2112]

Never mind...

I'm going to make this a new topic.

 

Edited November 24, 2018 by Deadman2112

[HockeyMike24]

Every member in Dutch's gang is a one of a kind near unkillable badass. It's like every member can be a R* protagonist.

 

End of Epilogue...

Just look at Mt Hagen when fighting Micah vs fighting any O'Driscoll

[Smokewood]

8 hours ago, The Holy Diver said:

I found it bizarre how the Van Der Linde Gang is supposed to be a company that rivals the O’Driscolls, yet only have a total of nine active members in their ranks, not counting the passive one’s who stay at the camp. The O’Driscolls, on the other hand, seems more like a genuine criminal enterprise. Throughout the game, you cut through hundreds of nameless goons working for Colm O’Driscoll. Isn’t it rather peculiar that a group of nine active criminals, which functions more as a family unit than a gang, actually poses a threat to such a massive band out outlaws? 

 

In the first game, Dutch’s gang is supposedly a shadow of it’s former self. And yet, he has more manpower than he ever did during the old days, all of them fiercely loyal to him and ready to die at a moment’s notice. During John’s short period of time hunting him, he also takes down dozens, if not hundreds of Dutch’s new gang members. And don’t even get me stared on the fact that the dude has a f*cking fort, much unlike the measly little camps his original gang lived in. 

Because they went for more of a young guns feel with this game. Billy's gang was 7 people to start with, 2 died along the way, and 2 more died at the end..... They also faced off against a giant gang (Murphy's gang), lawmen of the local town, US Marshall's, etc....

Edited November 24, 2018 by Smokewood

[Paro93]

You are right, it makes absolutely no sense, no matter how much "logic" you put in to it.

The simplest and better answer is that it is a game. They need npc for you to kill, so pretty much every gang in the game are just an army. 

[Psyperactive81]

Considering the fact that I can take out an entire posse of O'Driscolls in a single Dead Eye without a scratch, I think the odds are pretty even 

[Audi]

Just R* logic is all

[woggleman]

A small group of tight knit people willing to fight can take out an army. 

[Mach1bud]

The movie 300 comes to mind. 

 

23 good men are worth more than 1000 nobodies.

[Oldsport]

honestly, they should have had the core members of the gang as like vip or important people in the gang since they all have a role but they should have also had a system like GTA TLAD where u have like a couple named randoms and if they die, they get replaced. exactly how it was in gta tlad

[docholladay1976]

Tbh, the O'Driscols are too big to be believable, but it's a video game so I can easily overlook that.  Most old west outfits were just a handful of guys.  

[Non Funkable Token]

A bit of misproportion, yes.

 

The other gangs have several hideouts with a dozen guards each MINIMUM. Plus people roaming around. 

 

Van Der Linde gang is just a bunch of 20+ (half of them useless in combat) moving everywhere. Quality over quantity.

 

Dutch in 1 turned completely into a Colm O'Driscoll type of leader, as @RyuNova pointed, which is the perfect representation of his downfall. He lasted decades as an outlaw while being a big brother more than a leader, but didn't last long the other way around, so, big manpower and a Cochinay fort weren't better than a few experienced people with strong bonds. 

 

Van Der Linde gang is the real gang, in a literal way. The others are more like cartels, for the most part.

[happygrowls]

7 hours ago, Gray-Hand said:

Well, the Van Der Linde Gang has at least two members in Arthur and John who have Dead Eye superpowers as well as the super human resilience which allows them to shrug off something like 10 close range gun shots, so it’s not as imbalanced as it seems at first glance.

Arthur and John also defied nature and mated to make Jack Marston, who also has the dead eye superpowers and super human resistance

[RyuNova]

3 minutes ago, Fluffy Sock said:

Dutch in 1 turned completely into a Colm O'Driscoll type of leader, as @RyuNova pointed, which is the perfect representation of his downfall. He lasted decades as an outlaw while being a big brother more than a leader, but didn't last long the other way around, so, big manpower and a Cochinay fort weren't better than a few experienced people with strong bonds. 

 

They survived for so long because of loyalty. Everyone was willing to die for the Gang, everything people did was for the betterment of the Gang. Colm did not have loyalty, he had fear and hired anyone who could hold a gun.

[Journey_95]

Basically it's a game..that's it. Every enemy faction has somehow hundreds of people, not just in Rockstar's Games but in basically every other Game too.

 

And Rockstar could have gone the Tlad Route but I think they wanted a more personal experience and a "family" feeling with the Gang. In Tlad there were so many randoms that you didn't know at all so the fall of the Gang idn't feel as impactful

Edited November 24, 2018 by Journey_95

[Cutter De Blanc]

Arthur and Micah are worth like fifty guys each

[jje1000]

I'd say it's just a matter of gameplay mechanics in needing a large number of enemies to mow down. The O'Driscolls are definitely a larger and looser gang than the Van der Linde gang, but not significantly. This isn't too dissimilar to the real gangs in the Old West, which weren't really large groups as shown in the RDR series.

 

I personally reconcile that fact in that some of the enemies you shoot don't actually end up dying despite being stated as dead, but are just severely injured and end up being carted away after you leave the scene to heal up for your next confrontation. Same with the police, Van Horne, Valentine, Strawberry, etc.

 

Edited November 24, 2018 by jje1000

[TableTennisChamp]

3 hours ago, jje1000 said:

I'd say it's just a matter of gameplay mechanics in needing a large number of enemies to mow down. The O'Driscolls are definitely a larger and looser gang than the Van der Linde gang, but not significantly. This isn't too dissimilar to the real gangs in the Old West, which weren't really large groups as shown in the RDR series.

 

I personally reconcile that fact in that some of the enemies you shoot don't actually end up dying despite being stated as dead, but are just severely injured and end up being carted away after you leave the scene to heal up for your next confrontation. Same with the police, Van Horne, Valentine, Strawberry, etc.

 

I agree with the first paragraph but I shot everyone in the head so I don't think they're coming back lol

[jje1000]

1 hour ago, AddamHusayin said:

I agree with the first paragraph but I shot everyone in the head so I don't think they're coming back lol

It's just a simple head injury, I've seen shopkeepers come back from worse!