You can't be forced to do side missions. If the game makes you do them, they're not side missions.

If it's like Saints Row 3, they make you do one of each of the side missions as sort of an introduction/tutorial. Maybe that's what he means?

If I remember right you had to have a certain amount of respect in order to open up missions. In order to build up your respect you had to do side missions early in the game and throughout the game.

Yeah, story missions in SR2 required a certain respect level before you could do them. Sometimes if you reached a point where you didn't have enough respect to do the next mission, so you had to do a side mission or 2 to gain the respect in order to do the next story mission. I remember it being a hassle early in the game, but later in the game I didn't usually have a problem getting enough respect just doing the story missions. This was completely removed in SR3.

Yep, that's what I'm talking about. I'm the type of guy to plow through the main campaign first to get the full story first, then screw around with all of the side story stuff. The first two games pretty much force you to do side missions to build respect before you can progress in the main story. Which just seems like an odd thing to do in an open world game. Not a deal breaker for me, but I'm glad to hear that they removed it from the 3rd one.

I guess I did enough side missions that I never ran into the issue. Then again I was never in a mad rush to do the story missions. I mean, when you have side missions that involve spraying shit from a septic truck on anything in your way, or driving around a hooker so she can have sex in the back with other women, the story missions become a little less compelling.

I don't recall ever being forced to do side missions for respect.

I played through all 6 septic truck missions last night one after the other. It was hilarious and fun to play. Those are side missions I don't mind playing.

All those side missions have 2 sets of 6 (except the Demolition Derby). So you'll get to do 6 more later. They're also good for the rewards you get. This is how you get infinite ammo, unlimited sprint, etc. Ammo is really expensive in this game, so the infinite ammo rewards help a lot.

Good to know, thanks

I just finished the siege mission and no other missions popped up. My respect level is around 11 or so, so that's not the problem. Anyone know what I'm missing or what I need to do next?

Never mind, I got it. I had to finish some of the strongholds before the next mission would appear.