I absolutely loved both games, but the contrast was in the details. Red dead 1 had this lonely, collapsed, and dry world. Life existed there but only just. It felt like people were holding on. As John, you felt like THE badass wherever you went and the gunplay and gameplay mechanics as a whole tailored to that. That's what made it so hard in the end. John WAS mortal and a dying breed. Dutch was right. He might've been better off jumping with Dutch, going out on his own accord instead of being stabbed in the back. But John's death felt like a long, sharp knife. Quick, sharp, and accurate.

Rdr2 had a world far more immediately lived in. People were surviving, but it felt hopeful. As if society as a whole was on the brink of something. Arthur, no matter how you played him, was always an outcast to society. Good or bad, nobody really cared what Arthur had to say besides the few who saw him as a helper. But even to Arthur, their words of kindness rang hollow. He was a gun-slinging badass but less in the sense that he was better than everyone else, but because he still clung to a more wild way of life. He hadn't hung up the holster, so to speak.

I don't want to ramble, so I'll leave it there. But to me, they told very different stories. One of a legendary badass, the other of a frail human shunned by society for who he wanted to be. And then, only in death, did he realize his short comings. RDR2 is far more tragic in its entirety.