The premise of We Should Talk. sounded interesting enough: A choice-and-consequence, narrative adventure that’s suppose to mimic discussions about everyday life and building personal relationships. Seemed like it had potential to create some interesting stories given that the press kit indicated being able to craft discussions with at least 3 or 4 characters. Unfortunately, for a gameThe premise of We Should Talk. sounded interesting enough: A choice-and-consequence, narrative adventure that’s suppose to mimic discussions about everyday life and building personal relationships. Seemed like it had potential to create some interesting stories given that the press kit indicated being able to craft discussions with at least 3 or 4 characters. Unfortunately, for a game concept that lives or dies by developing relationships, We Should Talk. doesn’t really do the greatest job of letting you do that.
You play as an unnamed woman hanging out at her favourite bar called “The Getaway”, unwinding after a stressful days work. The bar’s atmosphere feels pretty welcoming. A smaller, cozy space lit up by the neon lights around the bar, with music and the chatter of other patrons filling the space around you. After talking, and in my case, flirting, with the bartender Sarah, you’re given a drink of your own creation and the game gets underway. The core gameplay loop focuses on crafting your own responses to various conversations using a dialogue scroll wheel interface. This can allow you to change up what you’re talking about and what sort of tone you want to take in the conversation. For instance, you can choose to get a bit flirty with Sam or play things a bit more straight faced. You can be polite or completely shut down the conversation.
You’ll be switching between your current relationship with your partner Sam, your ex-boyfriend Dante, who’s back in town for a new gig and stranger sitting next to you named Jimmy, who looks like he might’ve just been ghosted. You’ll spend most of the game talking via text messages with Sam, your partner who works with kids with disabilities. The conversations, for the most part, flow pretty naturally and you’ll spend most of the game building or in some cases, tearing down your relationship with her.
Your relationship with Sam is the one area of the game that feels like it’s had the most work put into it and perhaps that’s the point. However, I didn’t really get that same kind of feeling with the other characters that you can interact with in the game. Aside from getting you your drink and an option to flirt, like I chose, there’s not much in the way of building a connection with Sarah. Which is unfortunate because she seems like a super chill person that I absolutely would like to know more about. There’s your previous relationship with your ex-boyfriend Dante, which in theory, should provide an interesting wrinkle in this game’s overall narrative. However, in practice, the conversation with him is over way too quickly and you don’t get much backstory into what your relationship with him was like, other than maybe one or two lines of dialogue between you two. You can choose to see him on the side which can influence which ending you get, but because of how brief and vague the interaction is, the decision doesn’t feel like it carries much weight or consequence. Lastly, there’s Jimmy, a stranger sat next to you at the bar who mistakenly takes you as his date that he met online. Oddly enough, this is the one conversation that felt the most relatable for me. Other than some brief small talk and the option to befriend Jimmy (there’s an achievement tied to this), the conversation is over pretty quickly with not a whole lot ventured and not a whole lot gained. It plays out about the same why I’d handle myself in this situation: tell him he’s mistaken me for someone else, make some small talk out of politeness and then go back to doing my own thing without really getting invested in their story.
I also had a hard time getting invested the main character. Along with being a nameless protagonist who you barely even see throughout the game, there’s not much given to you in terms of her own backstory other than she’s a regular at the bar and that she use to be in a relationship with Dante. You get to more about your partner Sam and her backstory, however, she never really reciprocates the opportunity for you as the player to learn more about your own history. This added some difficulty when it came to getting invested in the relationship with Sam, since history between you two feels so one-sided, it’s tough to get any point of reference when it comes to dealing with/improving your relationship with her.
Graphically, the game isn’t anything overly impressive. The bar atmosphere feels great and lively. The models are these heavily stylized, low-poly characters that are fine. However, most of the game is set starting at a nondescript smartphone screen placed on top of some cocktail napkins.
Overall, We Should Talk. does have an interesting enough premise about building/managing personal relationships, but in practice, the relationships felt hard to get invested in and are hampered by a very short runtime. This feels more like a demo rather than a fleshed out indie game that ultimately left me wanting more.… Expand
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