Padrino
All-Star
No violence was done, and since I agree with most everything you wrote, I'll just take it as a lesson for how to better express myself in future posts
I would be a bit less harsh on the mission design. The missions are the most linear parts of the game for sure, because they support the very linear story. I generally want games to be able to deliver interactive narratives, because that's something that games can do, that other mediums cannot. But given how good the story of RDR2 is, it's hard for me to believe that I could or would have helped make the story better if I the player had more input. When it comes to the narrative, I can't complain too much that it's Arthur's story, and not mine
I just hate how unrelentingly narrow the mission parameters are, and how clunky the implementation is. It mismatches so mightily with the world they built and creates unnecessary player whiplash. Half the time, it's not even apparent why you achieve a fail state until it summarizes what you did wrong on the failure screen, which itself seems like poor design. RDR2's story missions need to provide either more pathways to success, fewer conditions for failure, or should be structured in a manner that invites further clarity around mission objectives.