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 t

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.