User blog comment:Master Sima Yi/Assassinews 12-05-'15 — Assassin's Creed: Syndicate has been revealed!/@comment-24760042-20150528165943/@comment-5174994-20150530010609

I've never liked the optional objectives. Having 100% synched each game, I believe it is my right to say that they are complete & utter crap. There's no actual challenge in them. It's either easy & tedious or cheap & annoying. Challenge would be something like saving somebody imprisoned behind many tough enemies, not doing something without being seen. That just restricts your playstyle & makes getting 100% a complete chore, rather than the optional challenge that it should be.

Effectively what I'm saying is that these optional objectives should be like small side-missions within the mission. You don't have to do them, but it's not complete if you don't. And they would actually be fun to complete, adding extra content instead of watering down pre-existing content.