The last open-world game that I played before RDR2 was Breath of the Wild, and I found the difference in philosophy very interesting.
Where RDR2 is filled to the brim with content, encounters, story and mechanics, it does become apparent after a while that it's all more or less hard-coded. And I felt that a lot of the actual gameplay stuff (UI, controls) suffered from too many of the problems that the previous games suffered from, and that it lacked a degree of innovation.
What made BotW special to me, was the way that the game provided you with a set of mechanics that could be mixed in all sorts of creative ways. While the world itself was less detailed than RDR2's, and the story a bit of a letdown, everything felt like a proper upgrade to the 'sandbox' type of game.
Of course, RDR2's sheer volume and beauty still makes it probably one of my favorite games of the year, but I found the contrast between the two quite interesting.
I totally agree. Creative mechanics that mix together to create emergent gameplay is the future. Rdr2 has a bit of it with the fire simulation, but in the end it’s the same old engine with the same old scripted events. Rdr2 is still amazing and very fun though.
Where RDR2 is filled to the brim with content, encounters, story and mechanics, it does become apparent after a while that it's all more or less hard-coded. And I felt that a lot of the actual gameplay stuff (UI, controls) suffered from too many of the problems that the previous games suffered from, and that it lacked a degree of innovation.
What made BotW special to me, was the way that the game provided you with a set of mechanics that could be mixed in all sorts of creative ways. While the world itself was less detailed than RDR2's, and the story a bit of a letdown, everything felt like a proper upgrade to the 'sandbox' type of game.
Of course, RDR2's sheer volume and beauty still makes it probably one of my favorite games of the year, but I found the contrast between the two quite interesting.