Someone said storytelling (rather than story) which is what it comes down to for me. In other genres the story is usually told primarily through cutscenes, but in adventure games you get much of the story by talking to people and by investigating your surroundings. This appeals to me a lot. All the talking also means fleshed out characters which is important to me.
Another aspect of storytelling in adventure games that I like is the way you as a character advance the story. You do this by talking and by solving puzzles. In a game like say Halo or Max Payne the only means of advancing the story that you have is to use violence.
The best adventure experience I've had this year was Mass Effect which I finished yesterday. It has characters with plenty of personality and you do advance a lot of the story through dialog and exploration. You get to use your sidearm frequently of course (even though some violence can be avoided through dialog), but this is fine with me. Violence is just one aspect of storytelling among others in Mass Effect, and more importantly your actions (be them violent or not) have consequences. This is one area where I find adventure games in general pretty weak. They don't show the consequences of your actions enough, even though the fleshed out characters should provide good opportunity to do this through reactions and character development.
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