I've been told the direct opposite to my face, especially for small games. But writers do matter. I'll put down stuff as it comes to me, feel free to add games you've experienced where the writing added to the game.
I like that this article was published after I started this list:
"submitted by" means someone else gave me the idea, but I haven't played a sufficient amount to agree or know what they're getting at, while
"recommended by" means that someone thought of it first, but I see where they're coming from.
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Probably the essential example of what a writer can do for a game, even in a tiny company.
Many of the dialog options would not have been nearly as good had they not felt like a human being was saying them, and not a machine just working out the options.
As much as I feel like I'm on a series of railroads, and as often as I feel that it's content being sprayed into holes sometimes, some writers, sadly without their names attached to their specific work, have made many of their games above the norm, especially when it comes to humor.
Terror isn't just about jump scares or gristle.
Thanks to Podunk.
It's easy for me to forget this when the lines are repeated way too frequently when you make a mistake, but the humor is quite good in this game. It helps that the direction of the cutscenes complements the writing so well, but the writing is part of what makes this game memorable, even if you don't remember individual lines.
One of my favorite settings in gaming, brought alive through the Less Is More philosophy of writing. Every book and line of dialog was just as much a treasure as any golden goblet.
I can't say I was uniformly satisfied with the voice acting, and the writing sometimes used daggers where it could have used sewing needles, but it worked. With the writing, Bioshock becomes memorable.
I won't argue that the themselves books were always great, though there are a few gems, but without writers making quests and inserting little surprises, sticking to the setting's rules and bringing back old references, it wouldn't be the Elder Scrolls.
This spills over into voice acting, but those manuscripts in the bestiary were wonderful.