BioWare - Conveying Story without Dialogue

BioWare's Pieter Parker writes for the BioBlog on Conveying Story to the Player With out Dialogue or Cutscenes.  The answers are fairly obvious but here's an opening snip from Part 1:

With over 320,000 recorded words used in Jade Empire and 20,000 lines of dialogue in Mass Effect (the equivalent of 15-20 movie screenplays for you number crunchers out there), there is no doubt that BioWare games are story heavy games that are rich with dialogue. The question is, are cinematics and dialogue the only way to convey story to the player, or are there other options available to the enthusiastic developer? In short, the answer is yes; and we as both an industry and a fan base are seeing a change in the way story is conveyed in video games.