CyberAmplified
New Head-Fier
I didn't find this at all. As long as you ignore the yellow markers for the story missions, you're free to do whatever you want and take as long as you want doing it. The trapper challenges do encourage you to dive into many aspects of the game, and the other collectable strands also neccessitate/demand taking time out to explore. I did everything I needed to in Shadow of the Tomb Raider and spent 70 hours doing that. I'm now close to spending 700 hours in RDR2 and still have many hours until completion.
I get where you're coming from. I think what I mean as far as it's too story driven is that the whole aspect of wanting to be a good guy/bad guy and the honor system that is presented to you seems to be influenced way too heavily on the story missions. For example,
That mission where you break Micah out of jail in Strawberry and shoot up half a town and get a massive bounty on your head in that area.
Despite everything though I still think it's one of the best games I've owned in quite a long time. Including some newer AAA's that have come out I have to say that RDR2 is one of the best. I guess I just miss the original Red Dead Redemption, and I'm afraid of how much R* will invest into the multiplayer mode like they did with the Grand Theft Auto series. Hopefully it will stay tried and true for the future to come. I guess only time can tell,