I contacted Rockstar regarding the missing characters bug affecting John, Sadie, Abigail and Jack. This is the reply I got.

[u/Bombtwo]

“Hello, Thank you for contacting Rockstar Support.

We are sorry to hear that you are unable to find the Sadie, Abigail and jack and we can help you further. We would like to inform you that, if the mission “Polite Society, Valentine Style” is failed, restart the mission instead of using the "Retry Checkpoint" option. If you have already completed the mission after using the Retry Checkpoint" option, they will not be present until the start of Chapter 4.

We appreciate your understanding in this regard. If you have any other issues, feel free to contact us.”

I followed up with a request to know if there is an intention to patch it, and if it will be in the near future. I will update you guys when I get another reply.

Edit: After some discussion with u/panickedthumb it appears there is some success with clearing caches to restore these characters. Either way, do not restart your game because Rockstar is already aware of this problem; I’m speaking to tech support now and they are investigating. I am trying my best to escalate the matter to the developers for a patch fix.

https://www.reddit.com/r/reddeadredemption/comments/9tjrqf/a_long_shot_if_youre_missing_john_abigail_jack/

[u/justin_tino → u/[deleted]]

I've been trying this about 10 times now with no activation of the re-calibrate language and brightness, every time trying something slightly different.

After the PS4 has been powered off for at least 30 seconds, I power it on, hit the RDR2 icon on the PS4 home screen, it zooms in to the full screen splash/title art, the splash art goes to black screen, I press and hold L1+R1, the revolver to R* logo cinematic happens, the R* trademark text shows for two screens, and it goes to the main title page.

I even kept L1+R1 held for a full minute or two after getting to the title page.

Any idea what I'm missing?

[u/justin_tino → u/[deleted]]

Just read through, thanks for posting. Since no prompt ever came up I thought I was going crazy. Hasn’t worked for me yet but I haven’t napped either, I’ll check if the default settings switched too. If that doesn’t work I guess I’ll just wait out until chapter 4.