Well, the thing is that, much like arcade games, the adventure game genre is still alive and well in the Far East. Though most of these are often of the visual novel variety, some are also of the point & click or 3D third-person variety. That pretty much explains why most of the adventure games these days are coming from Japan.

One reason for the decline of the adventure game genre in the West is the rising popularity of the RPG genre. Early RPGs could not match the strong narratives or the puzzle elements found in adventure games, but as RPG storytelling advanced during the 90s, adventure games slowly became obsolete as RPGs could now offer the strong narratives that was at one time unique to adventure games. Soon after, action-adventure games also started focusing on narrative, and nowadays even action games focus on narrative.

As for why the RPG genre, which is more popular in Japan than anywhere else, didn't kill off the adventure game genre in Japan, I think that has a lot to do with the niche 'otaku' fanbase and the demand for romance-themed games, something that RPGs rarely focus on. While this means a majority of Japanese adventure games often revolve around romance these days, at least having some kind of niche fanbase is better than nothing, as it has allowed plenty of non-romance Japanese adventure games to gain some popularity as well.

[QUOTE="thom-22"]

[QUOTE="Jag85"]

Well, the thing is that, much like arcade games, the adventure game genre is still alive and well in the Far East. Though most of these are often of the visual novel variety, some are also of the point & click or 3D third-person variety. That pretty much explains why most of the adventure games these days are coming from Japan.

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Most adventure games are coming from Europe, and especially Germany (as Tim Schafer famously said). I am talking about traditional *PC* adventures; personally, I do not count visual novels as adventure games.

[/QUOTE] What you're referring to is point & click graphic adventures, not adventure games in general, which includes text adventures, interactive fiction, visual novels, etc. Also, visual novels are mostly PC-based, not console-based.

[QUOTE="thom-22"]

[QUOTE="Jag85"]

[QUOTE="thom-22"]

Most adventure games are coming from Europe, and especially Germany (as Tim Schafer famously said). I am talking about traditional *PC* adventures; personally, I do not count visual novels as adventure games.

[/QUOTE] What you're referring to is point & click graphic adventures, not adventure games in general, which includes text adventures, interactive fiction, visual novels, etc. Also, visual novels are mostly PC-based, not console-based.

[/QUOTE]

No, I was referring to adventure games. I never said anything about the genre being strictly point-and-click (I even mentioned Stacking, which is certainly not P&C) or not including text adventures, which are clearly the origins of the genre. You can use whatever definition you want, but when I talk about adventure games, I do not include interactive fiction or visual novels or any game that does not involve non-linear exploration of a gameworld and puzzle-solving through manipulation of the gameworld as significant components of gameplay -- those were the defining features of the very first text adventure and were maintained as such by the earliest graphic adventures and all the classic adventures that are widely considered the best of the genre.

[/QUOTE]What I was referring to is when you said "traditional *PC* adventures", which for the most part used point & click interfaces during their hey day (i.e. most of the classic Lucas Arts games).

As for visual novels, that term is most often used to refer to a specific presentation/format/interface rather than what the gameplay entails. Many visual novels focus on non-linear storytelling (like Choose Your Own Adventure gamebooks) while others focus on puzzle-solving (like Western adventure games).

There have been a few good innovative triple A adventure games recently.

Heavy rain is a true adventure game if you ask me (not in the point and click sense, but that's the whole point of innovation)

And although it has shooting sequences, I count LA Noire as an adventure game.

I'm done with the point and click games although I loved them when I was a kid. Heavy Rain and LA Noire, I think that's the direction adventure should be going, but the genre is taking baby steps.