History Main / TalkToEveryone

** In ''VideoGame/EarthBound'', you must talk to a specific Mr Saturn so that he tells you how to enter to Master Belch's factory. No matter that there are like 15 of them and they all look exactly the same. There's one town later in the game which blocks your progress because its inhabitants aren't willing to talk at first. The good news is that you can solve the problem by bringing them a book on "Overcoming Shyness." The bad news is that the person who borrowed the book got abducted by Giygas' forces, and is being held in the Stonehenge Base.
** This trope is [[{{LampshadeHanging}} lampshaded]] in ''VideoGame/{{Mother 3}}'', where a NPC says something under the lines of "You just have to talk to everyone, don't you? ... No, I'm not saying that's a bad thing."

** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOracleGames'': At the very beginning of both games, the [[DistressedDamsel respective oracle]] is met somewhere in [[GhibliHills the woods]] along with some company (Nayru singing to WoodlandCreatures, and Din dancing with gipsies). In order to proceed, you need to have talked to each NPC on the screen once before talking to a particular NPC will trigger the next event.

* ''VisualNovel/FleuretBlanc'' takes this UpToEleven. Characters have literally over a ''dozen'' generic lines of dialogue, and have a comment to make on every single gossip topic (sometimes providing something different if you've advanced the relevant subplot). Some of this is fluff, but most of it provides important information needed to solve the mysteries.

''VideoGame/{{Okage}}'': One of the most egregious examples in Playstation 2 history; after the main character is hit with a curse that [[spoiler:erases their identity from the world, causing their party members to forget why they're adventuring in the first place and go back to their old lives]], you need to talk to almost everyone in ''the entire setting'' to cure it. There is no fast travel, and you need to manually check each person in each town all the way to the PC's family. On the plus side, there are no enemy encounters during this segment.

* In the original ''VideoGame/{{Ys}}'', you can't leave the first town without literally talking to ''everyone'' in it. Only once you've spoken to every person in town will the head of the town guard give you a sword, and they won't let you leave town unarmed (for good reason). ''Ys II'' even makes you talk to monsters.

* The ''VideoGame/TrailsSeries'' is ''very'' fond of this trope as ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfHeroesTrailsInTheSky'', ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfHeroesZeroNoKiseki'', and ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfHeroesTrailsOfColdSteel'' have "Hidden Quests" which don't show up in your quest list or get marked on your map: you can only discover them by talking to a specific nondescript NPC at a given time. Because of this, it's a good idea to talk to everyone at every possible moment you can. As a bonus, the game puts a lot of effort into giving every individual NPC different dialogue based on what's currently happening in the plot, so you miss out on a good deal of the game's script if you don't follow this trope. ''Cold Steel III'' somewhat makes it easier for players to see these hidden quests by marking them on the map but it still plays the trope straight when in one particular scene in chapter 4, players are required to talk to the entire people in the map ''twice!'' (and there are ''a lot of them'').

** In the final dungeon of ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX'', you can talk to ''thin air'' in certain spots to reveal "spirits" to play Tetra Master with.

* The ''VideoGame/TrailsSeries'' is ''very'' fond of this trope as ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfHeroesTrailsInTheSky'', ''VideoGame/ZeroNoKiseki'', and ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfHeroesTrailsOfColdSteel'' have "Hidden Quests" which don't show up in your quest list or get marked on your map: you can only discover them by talking to a specific nondescript NPC at a given time. Because of this, it's a good idea to talk to everyone at every possible moment you can. As a bonus, the game puts a lot of effort into giving every individual NPC different dialogue based on what's currently happening in the plot, so you miss out on a good deal of the game's script if you don't follow this trope. ''Cold Steel III'' somewhat makes it easier for players to see these hidden quests by marking them on the map but it still plays the trope straight when in one particular scene in chapter 4, players are required to talk to the entire people in the map ''twice!'' (and there are ''a lot of them'').

* The ''VideoGame/KisekiSeries'' is ''very'' fond of this trope as ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfHeroesTrailsInTheSky'', ''VideoGame/ZeroNoKiseki'', and ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfHeroesTrailsOfColdSteel'' have "Hidden Quests" which don't show up in your quest list or get marked on your map: you can only discover them by talking to a specific nondescript NPC at a given time. Because of this, it's a good idea to talk to everyone at every possible moment you can. As a bonus, the game puts a lot of effort into giving every individual NPC different dialogue based on what's currently happening in the plot, so you miss out on a good deal of the game's script if you don't follow this trope. ''Cold Steel III'' somewhat makes it easier for players to see these hidden quests by marking them on the map but it still plays the trope straight when in one particular scene in chapter 4, players are required to talk to the entire people in the map ''twice!'' (and there are ''a lot of them'').

** In ''VideoGame/EarthBound'', you must talk to a specific Mr Saturn so that he tells you how to enter to Master Belch's factory. No matter that there are like 15 of them and they all look exactly the same. There's one town later in the game which blocks your progress because its inhabitants aren't willing to talk at first.