HAHAHAHAH Raist m8 you are off ur rocker
Horizon isnt a RPG, and it's world was beautiful to explore, but also dull as fuck because there was basically nothing to discover or do in that world. And I LOVED Horizon. Cmon man, fuck off with this disengenous comparison. RDR2? Not an RPG either in any sense of the word, I LOVE that game and it's world has a lot of cool authered content in the form of strangers, but aside from that there is barely anything in the world that gives you incentive to explore except for hunting.
All those green icons on TW3 map are just fast travel posts. So let's not count those at all.
There are indeed monster lairs (where you can throw a bomb in and be done with them), bandit camps, treasures and places of power. Even if they are copied from one another, they really are throwaway activities.
In Assassins Creed, not only are you forced to do almost every sidequest to make sure you level up, so you can play the boring story missions, the side missions are mostly go here and fetch this item, loot this item, kill these enemies. No choices, no decisions, nothing.
If you are going to compare TW3 to Assassins Creed.. you might as well come in with an actual difference. In TW3 not only is the writing of even side quests and treasures so much better than in AC games, in AC games there isnt even any lore to any of it.
You don't HAVE to do any of those activities, so where is the padding exactly? In AC you are forced to seek out sidequests so you can level. Why is it not a vast and detailed world? Just because NPC's have the same clothing and animations? Fucking rofl m8.
In Assassins Creed you'll hear the same lines of dialogue every 10 fucking minutes from NPC's. AI DECISION GERETH. In TW3 that barely happens if ever.
RDR2 is an outlier, because while in that game the world is pretty mediocre to explore because there really isn't any point to exploring since there isnt much to find, interactions with NPC's is on another level. You can talk to any npc.
RDR2 is also 3 years younger than TW3, so I find that kind of hard to compare since it's from small team compared to Assassins Creed or RDR2.
AC especially, is fucking garbage compared to TW3 in the world department. It's a fucking travesty you would honestly compare those games, and give AC the nudge. Fucking hilarious even
TW3 is full of copy/pasted, repetitive padding crap.
Give me some examples then, besides the clothing and animations of NPC's, or the small activities you can find in the world. Tell me how repetitive the quests and dialogue are.