Anyone that has been in a relationship can agree that it takes a lot of effort to make it work. The key to a healthy relationship is communication and it seems like that’s what the team behind We should talk is going for with the game.
We should talk explores the relationship between two characters who have lived together for a decent amount of time. It’s said that opposites attract and that is perhaps why one of them is outgoing, whilst the other one prefers to retreat to their home after another day of work. The game takes places inside a bar with players taking on the role of the outgoing character as she spends a night out drinking and interacting with different characters.
In-between interacting with characters at the bar, she also talks to her girlfriend via the means of text messages like a true millennial. The idea is that the character makes certain choices during the interactions with other characters at the bar and then deals with any potential side effects this may have on her relationship after, whilst chatting to the girlfriend. One such example, sees a man blatantly flirting with her and it’s down to players to choose how to react to this. If the player chooses to flirt back, then it’s entirely possible to lie or be honest with the girlfriend when texting her after.
When chatting to others it is possible to pick from a couple of options whenever it is necessary to reply. Whilst it makes sense for sentences to seem broken when sending text messages to the girlfriend, it doesn’t feel quite as natural when chatting to people in person. It’s jarring to see some of the options that one can make use of when replying, since they don’t make that much sense.
In fact, the switch between chats with people at the bar and sending messages to the girlfriend is clunky at best. The game doesn’t always give enough time to chat to someone and the interactions with the girlfriend mostly consist of her complaining about her insecurities.
The characters and visuals also make the game look dated and like it would have been more at home as a game released a few year back. The designs for the characters look really basic and the whole bar design is bare bones. Given that this is a text based game, it would have also been helpful to get access to a chat/text history of everything that players had read so far whilst playing.
At least the game does offer a lot of different paths that the main character can take when chatting to others. Although the idea of seeing the outcome for each of the choices is not particularly appealing seeing as the girlfriend at home seems like a pushover.
Whilst We should talk picked some interesting topics to discuss (cheating, codependency, abuse, etc) regarding relationships, it doesn’t do a particularly good job of exploring them. It’s clear that the potential is there and yet it feels like it has mostly been squandered in a very average visual novel.
