The article raises a good point in that human settlements were really unimportant in the first game you did some trading and gear enhancement stuff here and occasionally triggered a side quests or main story line but it could absolutely be further enhanced. Navigating them was also a bit of a chore.
In the first game you were a lord and everyone approached you as such for the first half of the game until things change and I felt largely disconnected from the general population as a result in not sure how yotei is approaching this but I would like to see more of a rdr2 style system of random encounters being brought into the game to give more life to its cities.
There was random encounters in the game sure but they were largely limited in scope think rdr1 style wagon break down ambush scenes there was no large story chunks that could randomly appear and I think that really helps the games have extra depth in open worlds like in rdr2 which I call a gold standard of world building.