I'm not meaning to attribute JRPGs to the visual novel market itself. More that the reason they developed that way was because of the cultural shift in what was expected and known in gaming at the time. The style of fiction and of storytelling was much more popular over there than it was over here. Heck, even before there were pictures to go along with them, text adventures over there took the same direction, while we had games more akin to Zork (which wasn't exactly huge on the character interaction).

I'm not arguing as to the importance of the visual novel industry itself, but rather of the cultural shift it represented.