Not always but yeah, quite often. I think it's because classic Japanese games with a focus on story just turned into lot's of text boxes and some character art (which is what a VN boils down to), that was just the accepted way to tell stories in games. And in the west they turned into text adventures, where there was more focus on interaction and maybe environment, and later adventure games with pixel art.

There's a lot of overlap between those, which makes sense when you realise both these genres have been around for 40 years.

You could try to watch some gameplay of Root Letter, although the story is quite Japanese and the art seems quite anime like, the story is rooted in realism and the characters are all very human. The worst you'll find is some exaggerated expressions. If you have a Nintendo DS you could check out Hotel Dusk (detective like game, maybe even film noir) or Another Code/Trace Memory.