Visual novels tend to have little or no “action” elements, e.g. moving around an interacting with things, but by far the primary feature of visual novels is that they display a lot of text with mostly static pictures of the character that is speaking.
The Telltale formula has much more in common with point and click in that sense. Contrast this with Wheels of Aurelia, which does have mild action elements that can affect the endings you get, but the majority of the narrative is told through text and back and forth between the characters. I feel that Wheels has more in common with traditional Visual Novels than any Telltale game does.
