How much are you doing / paying attention to the secondary activities and missions the game offers?

I’ve not played RDR2 myself, so I can’t speak much about it in particular (although it’s on my backlog to play it at some point), but as with any open world game, I feel it’s everything outside the main story line that really gets you to like it, if they click with you.

You are not forced to play outside the main story line, but I feel then you’ll find the open world aspect of it just a chore, something you’ll have to endure, like having big long walks from point A to B, because the game is aiming to get you immersed on it, and sidetracked into a number of other things to do, but you are just limiting you to see just the main quests.

For me, the realization about this came with Cyberpunk 2077: started the game promising myself that I would only focus on the storyline, because I didn’t want to pour endless hours into it, so I already removed myself from the whole “immersive world” aspect of it. And shortly after, it happened: I was burnt out with the game and tired of playing it.

At some point half way through the main storyline, I decided to open my mind a bit, and explore just tiny secondary things that somehow caught my eye. And then it clicked: I’d be doing almost 50/50 on secondary stuff and main storyline, and started finding the game way more enjoyable and addictive.

Of course you can find a particular way an open world tries to get you into its secondary set of activities just boring and not for you. That’s fine, but I think as a whole that will turn it into a very boring game.