Not entirely true, the thing is that RDR2 doesn't possess a gravity to guide your actions. In a sense, you're mostly just floating around aimlessly hoping something will happen. And that's a lot of floating, since you spend a huge amount of time moving between places.
Since I now have a perfect grading curve for open world games (which is % comparison to Yakuza average, where 100% is equal to average Yakuza entry; for the record RDR/RDR2 fares probably the best out of open world games in this respect, scoring around 40% Yakuza so far, even without the advantage in being pretty much the only Wild West thing of their kind), it's best explained that there's no gripping feedback loop between activities or a constant sense of immediate goals in a gameworld that you are genuinely made intimately familiar with. A part of this problem I figure is that the character progression systems are so fiercely segregated, you essentially have to hunt specific random occurances to be able to level up your attributes, even cash is kind of a fourth category (though in case of cash you also don't really have to care after the early game, once you get all the gunshop accessories it's all basically a matter of whimsy like waiting to get the biggest revolver available so you can make it provide no tactical advantage). There's no strong sense of flow between all that you do and progression, in significant part because of how much you deal with random chance to have any sort of "loop". To again compare to Yakuza, the last two games had FIVE different categories of XP, but all of them flowed into each other and were fed primarily by a simple but engaging gameplay loop (do stuff/kick ass->eat/drink->repeat) that you had a great degree of control over.
It's no so much that RDR2 isn't an "interactive movie," but rather that it's a game where your primary contribution is to wait for the game to throw you something to do. The player is almost entirely a reactive agent.
Yeah that's been discussed around here before, modern tech has some input lag but most of the problem is in animations sacrificing gameplay for "realism"
Which in case of Rockstar's games is a deliberate attribute since as mentioned above GTA4. It's a downright obsession they have with having as much superfluous bullshit as possible (horse balls are just the crystallization of this obsession).
Rockstar seems to work on the assumption that more complex and inconvenient => better. It's hard to say so, for example the hunting system I think was better in RDR1 because it was simpler and more convenient, it didn't bs about with having to use different weapons to hit precise lethal spots of specific quality animals. RDR2 adds at least one step too many (animals having different quality being just bullshit made to waste your time).
I suppose the whole realism obsession is also the explanation why Rockstar's combat has never moved beyond San Andreas and still handles like a drunken elephant, since having active and fun combat systems would be unrealistic, so you mostly just stand as far as you can and hopefully half behind some outhouse or something and rely on firepower/health disparity to win you the day. Or worse, something tremendously tedious like the fistfight mechanics.
PS: RDR2 would instantly be cooler if the player character was a Lakota.
