The whole RDR map. I loved the size and the way it felt more alive than any other game world I've explored. It made the game much more enjoyable.
You could actually stand in the middle of a town and watch the NPCs go about their day. Shopkeepers would open up, wagons would roll through town, trains would come and go with people getting on and off, woman would be assaulted, men would be attacked by gangs and much more. As the sun set, shop keepers would close for the night and, slowly, one by one, most people would make their way to the saloon.
Killing someone had consequences beyond getting taken down by the law. If you shot the shopkeeper, that shop wouldn't open again for a while and, when it did reopen, it was a new guy.
That's the big difference between RDR and GTA. In GTA I have absolutely no problem walking into a busy street and wiping out dozens and dozen of NPCs just because I was bored but, in RDR, I killed so few civilian NPCs. If I killed an NPC that wasn't an enemy, it was in self defence or an accident. I may have killed one or two out of pure curiosity. I may have also killed one because he took a few too many dollars from me at poker or blackjack.
I feel a lot of games might have stopped with bringing towns alive but RDR even made the wild feel more alive. You could trot through the desert and see a coyote chase and catch a rabbit. You could walk through the forest and see a bunch of stag and deer grazing. Everything felt like it was natural. The world felt like it existed around you and not just for you and I think that's important. If you feel it's your world, the world becomes dull. Nothing matters, you can do what you want.
If you play RDR, go to the mountains in the far north of the map and walk to the edge. The view is amazing. No San Andreas style fog to obscure anything, you can actually see pretty much right across the map. This looks ten times better at sunset/sunrise.
R*s great job on RDR and its world has me really excited about GTA V. I know it's a different R* studio but I'm still hopeful they can replicate and improve on the excellent job done in RDR.
As fun as GTA has always been, it did feel like it was my world and the NPC were just human shaped targets, incase I got bored. I'm hoping it feels more alive in GTA V. I'm hoping each NPC has a schedule and "life" and not just randomly spawn and walk about, waiting to become Swiss cheese or roadkill.
