What makes the difference, I think, is if there are people working at the company who can approach both the mechanical and narrative side of things. Part of why the Sly games worked is that the plots were heavily tied to the gameplay; Bentley’s characterization had as much to do with his animations and abilities as his dialogue. Compare this to Bioware, which often segregates the two; consider the fact that in Dragon Age II being a blood mage has no effect on the plot, despite blood mages being one of the crucial pieces of the story.

Seriously though, I think the problem with videogames is their action movie mentality. I think perhaps it’s correct to think “We should get the gameplay right and the writing should be a secondary consideration.” in *some* cases — after all, I can think of many great games with garbage plots, whereas the list of games with great plots and awful gameplay is populated by critical darlings that were, nevertheless, commercial failures — but the problem with applying that approach across the board is that there is simply very little development room for a title like Walking Dead. And so it’s only the really big companies like the ones you mention (and Obsidian) who really have the latitude and the inclination to even try to make a decent job of it.

What are some other companies that consistently do much (or try to do much) with their writing? I nominate SuckerPunch based solely on the first three Sly Cooper titles (seriously, I think Bentley may be the most well-developed character I’ve encountered in a video game series, and he’s a CARTOON TURTLE).