Oh, I completely misunderstood the talk and pet mechanic, then. It's basically support conversations from the modern games, not the "these two characters need to talk during this map" thing that Thracia was doing. There's no bug here, I was just confused on how it worked.
Likewise, I'd misunderstood how death works, and assumed losing a character was permanent.
This actually...maybe makes the game a lot easier. I'll keep playing and see if being able to safely lose team members takes some pressure off of missions.