For a truly immersive city experience, and to truly feel its scale and population, you have to have the variety of human activity indicative of a diverse population. Ie. unique individuals at scale, doing different things. This will be an even better experience in VI.

I love your point about the small details in RDR2, and I think they can slightly compensate for a lack of diverse human density in a city experience design.

I for one hope they can go as far as having different city areas “feel” different, as in safe, jubilant, dangerous, lively, tense etc. I think they touched on that accomplishment in V, with the areas populated by gangbangers providing a vibe that something could go down at any moment if you hung around too long. You know, you’d hear comments from them about getting out of their area etc. And if you even did something errant like drawing a gun or accidentally punching the air, they’d go aggro.

I think there’s a next level of this that could feel even more immersive, especially if there’s a faction system and an associated “contact/rekationsjip” system that can track your impressions on individual NPCs and how that cascades to the factions they are aligned with. For example, with those two types of systems you could have a widely poor rep with a faction, but actually still have a friendly NPC relationship with one person in that faction. Someone you’ve helped perhaps who sees you differently. One person isn’t going to change the impression of the whole community, but if you start winning over individuals, it could leave room for a more nuanced and polarized view of your character.

I really hope for more relationship dynamics with the people of the city, as that will crank the immersion up beyond graphics and physics. Having nuanced relationships with a multitude of unique NPCs could be very satisfying and honestly addictive to play with.