Horses in original Redemption functioned more or less all the same, the system just wasn't expanded upon beyond the five special horses being slightly different each in their own way. So all horses were faster in that game.

They feel fast because they wanted the game to be fun when you're riding your horse.

In my mind RDR2 horses feel slow.

Me and my white Arabian are quite comfortable zooming across the landscape. I caught her by accident if you believe that.

@Thelittlebigpig Fr man. Maybe it's because I always keep the black shire you get early on in Chapter 2 but the horses feel so damn slow in Redemption 2. I get it's for more realism but honestly at the end of the day, it's more harmful for it to be "realistic" than for it not to be, similar to the friendly fire system in Rainbow Six Siege

Yeah the horses are a lot slower in rd2 because in rd1 it was to probably to get to places a lot faster, but in rd2 the reason why the horses are probably so slow is because of the random encounters or events you find while traveling, its probably the reason why you (mostly) can't fast travel alone in rd2, but you gotta buy an upgrade just to travel to towns faster