It's been found that Red Dead Redemption 2 has a hidden cutscene that might reveal the game was originally meant to be even larger. Because it turns out Arthur Morgan should've visited New Austin while accomplishing several tasks.
Rockstar's open-world western is pretty hard to blame for being short, as it could easily take players 50 to 100 hours to beat the game. However, the recently discovered unused cutscene in the PC version may prove that the devs intended to make RDR 2 bigger, with additional quests you can complete across the main story's desert region.
Discovered by YouTuber Kush Qrox (via PCGamesN), there's an almost finished cutscene with a full voice-over in the game's files, showing Arthur Morgan meeting the fisherman named Jeremy Gill at his house. The cutscene was seemingly a part of "A Fisher of Fish" side questline, challenging the player to chase rare and legendary fish all over the game's map. However, in the vanilla Red Dead Redemption 2, these quests become available only in the epilogue, during which you play as John Marston. In RDR 2, Arthur Morgan never meets Jeremy Gill.
As shown in the video above, Gill is sending Morgan to the desert to catch a giant catfish there. To this, Arthur replies he had enough of his adventures there, referring to him and the gang being chased by the lawmen after a robbery gone wrong in Blackwater. This is the reason why players weren't able to visit a big chunk of the map until the very end. Seems like Rockstar originally planned to remove the bounties on Dutch Gang members' heads earlier on, allowing you to freely explore Blackwater and New Austin as Arthur, and complete various side stories in the desert.
It is unknown why this content was cut from the final version of Red Dead Redemption 2. Perhaps, the devs decided to cut some content from the already massive game to keep up the momentum of the main story, or considered that New Austin should be left closely tied to John Marston. In addition, the landmass serves as a playground for social interactions and quests in Red Dead Online, which now appears to be dead due to Rockstar officially announcing that no more major updates will be released.