Ok, there's a lot to unpack here and with all due respect, it's difficult to not assume you made this thread either for attention or to just talk out your ass.
Firstly, RDR2 is clearly a game that has been built ground-up with its systems. One of the key themes of this game is 'Survival' - The survival of the player in moment-to-moment game-play via its mechanics, the survival of Dutch's Gang and the survival of the Wild West as an ideology/way of life. To its core, this is a game that is one with its narrative. So, I'm not sure how else you'd like it to be told? It's a Western. It needs wide open spaces and it needs to be unforgiving. It needs to have the slow, plodding pacing that gives the player the sense that their 'journey' is one that is long and arduous. This is constantly reminded to the player through the scope of the world, the stamina, health and camp mechanics and in at large, the dialogue, narrative and characters! Why do you think the game opens with a 2 hours prologue where the gang is on the precipice of defeat? If there's one thing this game has, it's a "compelling vision with a sense of place".
Horizon: Zero Dawn and Far Cry 3, despite being years apart are both games that heavily rely on the open-world tropes of the late 2000s. It's just the former looks the dog's bollocks. Horizon's main story constantly takes place outside of the open-world in Destiny-esque limbs that remove the player from the main map and place them in isolated dungeon where the story can be told like a linear action game. Something Guerilla even struggle with as the player is constantly bombarded with lore notes, audio logs and internal monologues. Guerilla seemed terrified to actually tell the story in the open-world they created unless it was following a detective-vision trail to another fight. Despite the game having enjoyable and aesthetically pleasing combat, I am really unclear on how its mechanics and narrative are any more experimental than Red Dead. One relies on genre tropes of Westerns and the other Sci-Fi. However, where Red Dead succeeds in having the player naturally explore their world through story and player will, Horizon removes the responsibility of the player and instead forces them in to corridors. The less said about its actual quest design, the better. But the fact that RDR2 has some quests that don't involve go to this location and kill a mob/have a story revelation already puts it above Horizon.
Which brings me to God of War with its semi-open world. I'll be the first to admit that this game wasn't my bag and whilst I concede it triumphs in many areas - storytelling, I believe, is somewhere it falters. Storytelling in a modern open-world game is difficult for a couple of reasons. You can't control player will for the most part which means you can't control pacing as well or what the player will see before you want them to see it. God of War solves this in some ways by blocking off certain areas until certain story beats have played out. Some people felt this meant God of War was a metroidvania in that regard but really it's just a linear action game playing out in a pseudo-open-world. I think it's slightly disingenuous to say that God of War is successful in open-world storytelling as it never really gives the player complete freedom, eliminating the chance of the player seeing or doing something that interferes with the narrative.
How can you say open-worlds like Skyrim (a breakable, open-world, choose your own adventure), BoTW (an emergent, physics-based world relying purely on player agency) , Assassin's Creed (a check-list simulator) and Horizon (A theme-park) and then suggest RDR2 (a completely grounded, mechanic/system reliant open-world) and TW3 (highly scripted/character driven open-world setting) are similar?
Essentially, you keep talking but are you actually saying anything?
