Stories in Videogames can never be as books. Even adventure games, which most closely resemble the literary format. They're another genre, and therefore I think they should be judged in their own merits. A book is a book, a point and click is a point and click.

That doesn't mean an adventure game can't present an enthralling and fun experience. It is merely another medium to tell a story! with setbacks and benefits of its own.

I have just replayed the Tex Murphy games, and I played the Gabriel Knight series many times over the years (GK1, six times; GK2, eleven times; GK3, six times) and their stories still surpasses many books I've read in the meantime, particularly The Beast Within. Of course I'm not thinking of Proust, or Joyce, or Hollinghurst, but they are deep and profound, meaningful and revealing and Jane's writing is really brilliant.

May I make some book suggestions then? : )

Please, do. I'm kinda used to those old writers I mentioned - Proust in particular, but also Henry James, who is my favorite writer (The Wings of the Dove, The Golden Bowl, The Bostonians and, obviously, The Turn of the Screw) -, but I can be quite picky about my contemporary literary tastes: for example I don't like the Minimalism (Ã* la Carver), while I'm quite fond of Southern Gothic or Cunnigham novels; I simply adore coming-of-age tales, especially if settled in boarding schools or colleges, like A Separate Peace or Mann's Tonio Kroger. In the horror genre, which is a favorite of mine, I tend to like more Anna Rice or Clive Barker (pre-Abarat) than Stephen King, who I always find quite trivial (except for Misery, Dolores Clayborne and The Body)...

... If you have some suggestions to make, I'll be glad to hear them, but maybe a PM is more adapt, since this discussion is about adventure games and not our literary tastes. But, I think heribertovalle is right: I can't compare the cinema storytelling with the literary narrative, as much as I can't really compare the serial story of some good TV show with adventure games. But, my point is, these media are simply different, not pretentiously superior or inferior than other ones.

And a Bad story with bad characters will be mediocre as a book, game, or whatnot. An adventure game might share more with books (and sometimes movies) than with other creative genres, but You can still create something worthwhile and compelling.

Although I have to admit that Adventure games tend to fall into one-track cliche variations sometimes. but that's a generalization that's easily proven wrong by many good games. So it's not an always.

Not true with many 1st person qadventures where puzzles are the game... obsidian, many of the mysts, etc.. the game is the puzzles.

To be honest I think the distinction here with these two options is becoming somewhat more muddied with this change, rather than clearer.

Character dialogue and interaction is an intrinsic part of conveying most stories/plots (without them all you have is a bunch of scenery and inanimate objects waiting around for someone to come along and do something, which is generally considered to be 'the story', and the quality of the dialogue is part of the quality of writing, so...

Anyway, this doesn't change my vote - it's still story/plot #1, but I'm definitely including the characters and their dialogue as part of that, for my own definition, and I suspect many others will too. ;)

Without question atmosphere is what is most important to me in an adventure game. That's a fairly broad concept, of course, and one difficult to specify. I wound up voting for "The Story or Plot (Quality of the plot/writing and how the story drives the game)" as that tends to have a fairly sizable effect on the atmosphere of the game. A game with very little plot can have excellent ambience to it, as with some of the 'Myst-Clones' of the nineties, while one with a very detailed but poorly told story can have it's atmosphere slowly driven into the ground. An in-depth story also tends to drive the game a fair bit, and so would also have an effect.

Of course the other options in this poll have an impact as well, which contributes to the difficulty in nailing this in place...

I voted for Exploration (Larger, non-linear world or environment), but it's really exploration combined with puzzles. One of my favorite things in games is being able to immerse myself in an interesting environment. Non-linearity is important too, though it's often missing from a game that sticks too close to a storyline. I don't need or want a story that "drives the game." I prefer some degree of non-linearity.

Exploration... especially as described (non-linear).

Which, to me, means puzzles/problem-solving with options (even red-herrings in my inventory!). As long as the objective is reached or the obstacle is overcome so that the story can advance without breaking... I.E. it all makes sense... you have achieved a wonderful game.

Of course, making the above work is, understandably, very hard to do, and, thus, very rare indeed. But, if a game manages to manage some semblance of grasping this Brass Golden Ring of what-is-the-most-important-feature-that-attracts-MikaneZaprick-to-an-adventure-game, all the prettifying stuff (Oscar-worthy voice acting, stunning graphics, musical geniusisms) can pretty much be excused for not showing up.

Exploration + story. Or exploration + puzzles. Or story + puzzles. With top-notch voiceacting. I'm not particular. :D

So I didn't vote...