Usually for every FF, I'll go back and talk to people after every major event. Often somebody would have interesting and relevant stuff to say, even if it wasn't totally related to the gameplay. It might just be a little bit of backstory that would immerse me in the world.

FFXII is the first one that I did not do that.

I think there's 3 reasons for that.

1. There seemed to be just too many NPCs compared to previous FF games. This was especially the case in the big cities like Rabanstre and Archadia.

2. When I did talk to them, they didn't really seem to have anything interesting to say. So I kinda gave up after a while. Now, I like FFXII, but this might've been the by-product of having a not-so-great story and character development (IMO!).

3. In all honesty - and this wasn't FFXII's fault - I was playing FFXI at the time, and I was pretty burned out on talking to NPCs.

For FFXIII, I'm prepared to talk to NPCs again, which doesn't seem to be a chore this time since they talk automatically. Yay.