For those worried about giving any money to Ubisoft purchasing SH5, don't. Amazon list it now for $4.60 USD.

:up:

No. SH2 was like that, and SH3 almost ended up that way until the Great Mutiny happened. SH5 does have specific goals, but anyone will tell you you don't have to do them all at once, and you don't have to do them at all if you don't want to. I'm certainly no expert, but from what I've heard you can play the game exactly the same as SH3 and SH4, at least as far as the campaign is concerned.

Correct.

This is correct. Apparently, not completing the objectives will have some effect on the direction of the dynamic campaign, but there's no GAME OVER or anything if you ignore the missions.

However, I think you might need to complete missions, or at least sink ships that give credit toward missions, to earn promotion points for your crew. It's easy though to earn points for doing the easy merchant tonnage missions and doesn't take long to max out the most important crew skills.