3. Its for the Ambiance
I spent so much time on the Ambient Challenges in Red Dead Redemption that at times I almost forgot that there was a main game. Although picking through the wilderness for rare animals, plants, treasure or ever-shrinking things to shoot at can often take up entire play sessions, theres something oddly compelling about it that makes it seem like time well spent. Far from coming off annoying, with the Ambient Challenges Rockstar effectively veered away from the worrying trend of non-stop, frenetic gameplay and delivered a mechanic that was slow, time-consuming and ultimately rewarded patience and conviction. In short they slowed us down to the pace of a Western. Id love to see even more made of these Ambient Challenges in Red Dead Redemption 2; maybe in the form of entirely new ones, as well as a welcome return of the old ones of course. Because nothing made me feel more like a cowboy than spending an entire night following the sounds of what I believed to be a Bighorn Goat or something similar. Perhaps there could be a Trader challenge, in which you had to wheel and deal in various challenging marketplaces or sell certain amounts of different rare commodities to progress; or a Horsemanship challenge in which you had to pull off certain manoeuvres or win races.