I played RDR2 from shortly after launch, and finished it about a week ago. I completed all of the main story and epilogue, and a good chunk of the side content.  I thought the game was excellent in just about every way.

A few days ago, I picked up Assassin's Creed Odyssey. I was never a huge fan of that series, but I had a lot of fun with last year's Origins.  I heard mostly good things about this year's game as well, so I figured I'd give it a shot.  After playing for a few days, I'd say that the game is pretty good. It's a whole lot like last year's Origins, and that's fine.  I'm pretty sure I'll play it through.

The thing is, within just a few hours of playtime, I started noticing many ways in which the game compares unfavorably to Red Dead Redemption 2. This is not to say that there's anything wrong with Odyssey.  Rather it is to point out just how good RDR2 is.

One of the first and most obvious things that I noticed was the extremely long load times. Assassin's Creed seems like it's always loading, and always making me wait while it does so. Red Dead almost never made me feel that way.  Both are very large, open world games. But, one of them, through game design choices, technical expertise, or both, makes me wait a whole lot less. That's something I can see and appreciate easily in a modern video game. (I played both on PS4 Pro)

Then there's the horse.  This one is so uneven it's not funny. The animations, the sounds, and just everything about the horse in Red Dead Redemption 2 is so much better. In fact, using your horse in Red Dead is so good that it makes the lack of a good fast travel system almost irrelevant.  Contrast that with Odyssey's inferior looking, and incredibly inferior sounding horseback experience.  It's like comparing $200 hiking boots with dollar store flip flops.

The list really goes on and on.  Graphics and audio are the two themes that runs through everything when comparing these two games. But it doesn't stop there. Red Dead is superior in almost every way. 

As I said, the point of this post is not to belittle Assassin's Creed. In my time with it so far, it seems like a good game. I'm glad I have the opportunity to play it.  But, man, Red Dead Redemption 2 sure is a great game. And comparing it to other top tier titles just makes it that much more obvious.  Maybe I should have given open world, action/adventure games a little break after RDR2.....

Playing AC this week, wouldn't even touch RDR 2.

I haven't played RDR2 but it's good to hear that they've improved the horse riding experience from RDR. Riding a horse in RDR sucked so much. It was frustrating and annoying and part of the reason I dropped the game and never went back. Another part of dropping the game was the terrible gunplay, though I've heard that isn't all that good in RDR2.

Budget and time spent does not always dictate quality. There are ways to make a better AAA than Red Dead without spending nearly as much time on the game. 

The horseback riding experience is much, much better than the first game. Gunplay is definitely improved, but there is still room for improvement. All in all though, I'd say it's within the acceptable range for the type of game that it is.

Well that's the difference between a big budget game with a long development time and Assassin's Creed.

I'm doing exactly the same thing and I'd agree with everything you posted. I much prefer the setting of AC: Odyssey but RDR2 is just polished to a level way beyond AC that in nearly every objective way. The long load times, the semi-frequent bugs/slowdown and horse animation that looked fine in Origins that now looks clunky at best... they're all that bit more noticeable.

RDR2 was not perfect and Odyssey is still a great game, but you can really see where the extra time it took to develop RDR2 went.

Yes, I think that's a good way to put it.  RDR2 is AAAA.  

Yup.  It is nice to see what devs can accomolish when they have massive resources to work with. 

Yes, you certainly can see it.  I wish we had a few more games like this (in terms of mega-budget, nearly unlimited time development cycles).  I imagine Rockstar will take it up yet another notch with GTA6, and that's great.  But, it would be good for gaming if they weren't just competing with themselves.

Resources and time. I mean AC:Origins and Odyssey are impressive games. But how long were they developed for? Its seems like Origins was thrown together in a couple years while Syndicate was being worked on. Meanwhile Odyssey came the year after.

RDR2 was probably being worked on just after GTA5 launched.

I feel Ubisoft has very talented people that have to put out content quickly and they do a good job for what its worth.

You're right. But there is no reason Ubisoft can't put the same resources in Assassin's Creed as Rockstar did in Red Dead Redemption 2. If Ubisoft stuck to do something similar with the same time and money Odyssey would have been the game to follow Brotherhood, which sold over 10 million and would have sold as well as Red Dead Redemption if it didn't have so many sequels since then as it has 8 games between Odyssey and Brotherhood.

We should not make excuses for these publishers. They charge the same $70 for their games and are hugely successful so they should be held in the same regards when it comes to expected quality. I appreciate Rockstar for investing in their product instead of having games made in production lines. I enjoyed Odyssey but it felt really dated compared to other games I played this year, it was also very bloated and they even reused the soundtrack from Assassin's Creed 2. Stuff like that really puts me off and I bought Odyssey at a discounted price and still think its among the worst games I played this year. Its only better than Far Cry 5 and Octopath Traveller.