I would say it's the best game I've ever played because the aesthetics are so amazing I actually feel compelled to 'roleplay'. I've played lots of games classified as role playing but really I'm always just working the mechanics. In RD2 I sometimes turn on the game just to go for a horse ride or go fishing regardless of whether or not it's contributing to objective progress.
The scale of technical achievement is by far more impressive than anything that came before. Metal Gear Solid 5 might be the closest thing in terms of open world technology, but RDR2 is far superior to it.
The anti-game aspects create a very different dramatic experience than most games. Sometimes you just ride along with another character and do nothing but observe what happens. Other times your plans get derailed in an Inception sort of way and you end up halfway acrosd the map doing something you never intended, none of which has anything to do with the story. This happens in ways that are much more organic and natural than previous similar mechanisms in e.g. GTA games.
The story deals with a lot of themes that have more impact because of coming across them in an open world (stumbling into KKK meetings, seeing lynched bodies hanging in swamplands, tracking down a gang that tortures animals, finding evidence of families split by slave trade, and many more).
The main story is compelling and well crafted, but the fuller picture from the pastiche of stuff in the world makes it feel effective, and the scenes of blood-thirsty wild west action feel more like uncommon punctuation marks than important aspects of the plot.
> The scale of technical achievement is by far more impressive than anything that came before. Metal Gear Solid 5 might be the closest thing in terms of open world technology, but RDR2 is far superior to it.
Yep. MGSV has better graphics and far better controls, but the open world in MGSV always felt dead, especially as you got away from enemy bases or outposts. RDR2 does a much better job of always giving you something to do out in the open world that isn't necessarily mission based. MGSV also basically has no friendly or neutral NPCs in the mission areas, which further contributes to breaking the immersion of being in an actual world.
RDR2 does an impressive job of making the stuff seem to organically happen. Smoke signals from random camp sites, animal movements, strangers, other riders on the roads. I’m sure future games will make it even smoother and more integrated, but it’s already impressive in RDR2.
You can also completely ignore these interactions, but you risk missing out on things that will be much harder to do if you wait and come back later, or which might not reappear as options, like helping a stranger or looting a specific enemy camp.