@lr-hr-rh:
This statement is kind of confusing to me so I'm hoping you can clarify a bit. Wouldn't visual novels qualify as a pretty obvious genre of game where you can have a well-written narrative but also have your actions affect the outcome in terms of the ending you get? And I don't mean that in some sort of "gotcha" or "bet you didn't think of that" way, just that I'm assuming I'm misreading somewhat your intentions as otherwise games with dialogue options and multiple endings would be pretty obvious examples of combining interactivity and story telling.
Visual novels are usually pretty linear, like Ace Attorney or Danganronpa. The interactivity in those games are mostly about putting the puzzle together one piece at a time. The latter lets you get to know the characters more by letting you choose who to interact with in a limited time, so you get invested in them more.
Games like 999 and the Walking Dead Season 2 have multiple endings, but they're limited in number and scope, because they're trying to contribute to the broader narrative with regards to the story or the characters.
Gameplay itself doesn't have to affect the exact ending of the story to be worthwhile. RPGs like to have narratives, and they rarely intertwine with the gameplay (with standout exceptions like Undertale).
The interactivity in the Telltale games is largely about defining your character's interactions with the people around them. Your choices have effects on how you treat people and how they treat you back. Sometimes this brings about different conclusions to scenarios, or entirely different endings, but they're all limited in scope.
You don't need your choices to affect the end for them to make a difference. In a platformer like Mario 64, you have a variety of options to approach the same goals. Will the Mario go left? Or up? Or spin in circles before doing anything? Or will he build up speed for 12 hours? None of these options will have an impact on the outcome of you getting that star, but they're meaningful options that allow a player to make the experience their own. This is the effect of the decision making in Telltale games. You'll ultimately get to the same place, but you make the journey your own.
The point of my statement was more about storytelling, though. It's hard to tell a really good story and also allow a player total freedom to interact with it. Imagine if you made the Titanic into a visual novel. You're trying to move people with a story of tragic romance. What if you wanted the player to be able to affect the story, though? There are only so many paths you can go down while still maintaining your tragic romance. If you let the player warn the captain about the iceberg and save the ship, then it's no longer a tragedy. If you let the player murder everyone, then it becomes a sort of thriller. If you let the player get off the boat in the opening act, head to the shore and then pick up hunks on the beach then you're off the rails and not even telling the story you set out to tell. If you let the player choose between all of these options, then there's little chance that they'll ever experience what you wanted them to experience in the first place. That's what I mean when I say it isn't important for player actions to have big impacts on the story. The more you let a player do, the less control you have on the narrative. If you want to write a tight narrative, you have to limit the impact a player's actions have on it.
This part's also kind of confusing. It doesn't take a particularly broad definition of narrative for this sort of statement to apply to virtually any game that tries to mix gameplay and storytelling. I mean even in fairly linear games like the Zelda series, the "narrative" of how Link saves the world can be engaged in through gameplay in the innumerable decisions you make while playing the game even though the tentpole moments of the story are completely fixed. That is to say, the narrative of a game of Majora's Mask doesn't just go: Link arrived in Clock town as a Deku –> was turned back in to a human --> healed the 4 giants --> went to the moon and battled Majora, but instead would be described something like: Link arriving in Clock town, talked to any npcs that looked interesting to "them" (i.e the player), walked down a side alley and found a random fairy, talked to more npcs to try and figure out what to do with the fairy, eventually found the great fairy fountain in the north? side of town, randomly shot a balloon with that asshole's face on it because it seemed like a fun thing to do, was then accosted by 4 identical twin children and so on. And obviously the sequence of events would be different for different playthroughs and different players. So I'm not entirely sure what it is that these games are offering that is different :/
I never said they were offering something abstractly different. The thing they specifically do, though, is make gameplay designed to serve the narrative. Some games are more game, some are more narrative. Telltale games are very narrative heavy and very light on gameplay. Some people see that and then question their status as games, or wonder why they aren't just movies or something. There is a point to the gameplay, though, and that's to engage the player in the narrative. I think that it's been pretty effective in the Walking Dead games, because the more invested you become in your character or their decisions, the more vulnerable you are to the dramatic elements. I don't know how it holds up in the other games, since I haven't played them, but that's the premise.