Not necessarily optional.
Gears Tactics contains several side missions that you can take on while you’re not busy with a main story mission, but their implementation is a bit unique in this game. While they’re called side missions, they’re not side missions in the way you might expect. One would expect side missions to be completely optional, but that is absolutely not the case in Gears Tactics. Side missions serve as a reason for you to amass a large number of troops and use each and every one of them because of how they work. They’re pretty much just main missions that don’t have any bearing on the story.
Gears Tactics – Side Missions Explained
Side missions in Gears Tactics are mandatory. There are several points in the game where you will be forced to complete a certain number of generic side missions, such as holding a position or rescuing captive soldiers, in order to access the next main story mission. You can see how many you need to complete by looking at the “Missions Played” counter on the mission select screen. You’ll typically only need to play a few, but they can take a while to finish and the hours definitely add up.
There is only a small pool of side mission objectives to pull from, so you’re going to end up repeating the same objectives a lot throughout the campaign of Gears Tactics. Rescue tasks you with saving captive soldiers. Control sees you securing a position on the map and holding it for a set amount of time. Scavenger Run requires you to grab equipment strewn about the environment. Sabotage asks you to destroy key targets. These are the four types of side objectives in Gears Tactics, and you’ll be forced to do them in between just about every story mission. Gears Tactics might not contain as many Acts as previous games, but these types of objectives make Tactics the longest Gears game by a large margin by padding out play time.
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