I had a crazy experience with RDR2 this weekend. I did the mission where you take the three women from your camp into town, and at the end of the mission, a random guy from Blackwater recognizes you, and you have to go chase after him and decide how to handle it. So I ended up randomly commandeering someone's horse to go chase him down. After I spared him, I didn't want to go back to the town because there was a bounty on my head for stealing the horse. That's where I really screwed up. So I pressed on, and ended up at a railroad station, where I stole a train with about 6-7 US Marshalls galloping in tow behind me. After crossing over 2-3 states (I ended up in the Bayou) I realized it was going to be difficult to get back to the part of the map where I was before.
I ended up killing all the Marshalls, and my bounty got to $180+. There was no way I could pay that off, even after finding the incestuous "couple" at the pig farm and stealing their money, and I couldn't find a way to return the horse I'd stolen. (Also that afternoon I went alligator hunting, sucked the venom out of a guy's leg who was on the side of the road - he gave me a free gun from the gunsmith as a reward, and shot up and looted a bunch of ranchers.)
At the end of the day, I got sick of having two horses (one was temporary) and I didn't see a clear path to clearing my bounty so I just restarted the story. All of that, and I was only 5-6 missions in. What an absolutely spectacular game. I spent a good 4-5 real life hours messing around and doing nothing to increase the story, and a TON of stuff still happened to me. This game is going to be a huge time suck!