But wouldn’t that a) spoiler some puzzles and b) is a little bit odd because the hero of the story can’t know what’s happen in the different rooms.
And what happens if there happens something at a place that the player can’t reach at that moment? He would (re-)try to reach that place.
For me a better way would be, if I could ask the people in the game again. 
But that’s of course more difficult in a game where the elapsing of the time is important.
Yes. But I’ve listed alternatives so we can just use different kind of hints for different puzzles.
Yes, that’s why Ron (as it seems like) doesn’t really like these kind of cutscenes as we had in Maniac Mansion anymore. But I still do
Well then this cutscene shouldn’t be shown at this point of time.
Ideally yes, but sometimes there are events preventing this, like leaving an area without being able to return or a death of a character.
Also please don’t forget to remove such dialog options when they become obsolete in the game world! (a pet peeve of mine )
Well, it could work: Alfred Hitchcock was a master of “custscenes” where the audience knows more then the hero. This could create a huge level of “suspense”.
True, it is unrealistic if the character knows if something changed in some other location he is not in. But what is the alternative? Cruise for a Corpse. And we already know it does not work. it produces frustrating gameplay.
I just wanted to add that for me Cruise for a Corpse was really a bad experience because, as you have already discussed, there is not a way to know that something important is happening elsewhere: events just happen and the player has to be lucky to find them. I hate the entire schedule-based concept and the only way to “fix” it for me would be not using it. 
A similar (but not so serious) problem can be found in Sinking Island: you have to continually visit the same locations to find characters or to witness something but, unlike Cruise for a Corpse, events are not timed, they just “wait” for the player.
Yeah, I wish I had realized this when I was playing. I had read the book years before and when I got stuck in the game, I thought to myself, “Eh, it’s kind of useless, I’m simply working toward the book’s ending, which I already know, so no sense playing,” and I stopped. Maybe I’ll pick it up again. But I’m realizing I’m actually not very good at these kinds of games. 
Suppose it’s not bad design, but it’s my proposal that’s bad design? Suppose Roberta Williams though of that, but ruled it out, because in that case the player would be stuck, and she thought this bad design? Instead, with her solution, the player cannot be stuck. The game continues (even if you miss that clue).
Well, the ending in the book is far more “clever”. Or in other words: For me the alternative ending was a little bit disappointing.
Don’t show a cut-scene, give more other clues. If you need a cut-scene, do it in a clever way like Alfred Hitchcock did in his films.
I haven’t read the entire thread, so someone may have already made a similar comment. These are just some observations I’ve made. I’m arguing that there is no puzzle that absolutely depends on verbs. That’s not to say that you can’t obscure the solution with verbs. For example, a puzzle might require you to Pull the cord to a lawnmower rather than simply just Use the lawnmower. But you could simplify the puzzle by having the player just Use the cord. Is the puzzle better for it? Probably. Just depends on your taste, I guess. With that said, all puzzles are combining items to change states (more on this later).
Instead of Open and Close, a door can be operated with just Use. You’re toggling the state. If it’s open, it toggles to close. If it’s closed, it toggles to open. Push and Pull can also be changed to Use. Simply divide the object into two hotspots and default the “world” logic/behavior to pushes. If you Use the left hotspot, it pushes it to the right of the screen. If you Use the right hotspot, it pushes it to the left.
We’ve already eliminated 4/9 verbs. Other than Use that leaves Talk To, Pick Up, Give, and Look At. These can all be changed to Use with context. If you click a NPC, it’s Talk To. If you have an Inventory item selected when clicking an NPC, it’s Give. Any “world” item that can become an inventory item is Pick Up. Selecting an inventory item and using it on another inventory item or a “world” item is Use. Look At is when all of the previous contexts fail. How do you Look At an inventory item? Just make one of the inventory items a magnifying glass. It becomes another item permutation. In fact, Use is just the default (plain mouse cursor) item. So, indeed, all actions in the game can be abstracted to combining inventory items. The Wintermute Engine treats this in a very elegant way. If you use a key on a door, the door checks to see if it has a key event defined.
For dialog trees, this abstraction doesn’t really work at the scripting level. The way I’ve seen this done in engines is always the same. I’ve personally never seen any exceptions. When the player clicks an NPC, the script enters a loop and some function blocks the typical UI interactions and waits for the player to make a selection. When a selection is made, it returns the index value of the dialog choice. Oftentimes the choice just affects the options in the dialog tree – by changing or removing the dialog option. e.g. “Who are you?” would change to “Who are you, again?” or just disappear completely. But sometimes it’s game-wide, and talking to a player in one scene affects one or many global states. Returning from the function restores the UI.
There is a difference between ‘Give chainsaw to Sandy’ and ‘Use chainsaw with Sandy’.
Regarding Look At: If there is such look at functionality in a game then I want to be able to always use it, also on NPCs (especially on NPCs).
Of course a lot of games using a two-verb interface are exactly doing this, merging everything into Use.
But I’m especially not a fan of one-verb interfaces without a dedicated Look At verb.
I think most games without verbs solved that by moving Give into the dialog tree. e.g. If you Use the chainsaw on Sandy, it kills her. If you want to Give it to her, click on her without the chainsaw selected to Talk To and say, “I want to give you this chainsaw.” For games with more than one PC, just drag it to their icon. And don’t display the dialog choice until the PC has it in their inventory; that way you don’t reveal it as a solution to the puzzle.
Just have a magnifying glass in the inventory. For scroll-able inventories, just pin it to the top. Or have tool tips. Machinarium left it out completely.
This is what every point and click adventure has done since 1995, turned every verb into USE. Starting up a dialog to GIVE TO is also a puzzle give-a-way. We did it a couple of times in TWP and I got bitched at by some people because it gave the puzzle away.
I think people are trying to solve the problem the wrong way. The correct solution is to rethink it from the ground up, including how puzzles are structured and represented. UI tweaks won’t fix the USE issue.
Ron, can I ask you what you think of the Cruise for a Corpse UI? I’d say it fixes the USE issue very elegantly, without puzzle giveaways.
I actually think most games with inventories just allow you to select an item and ‘Use’ it with NPCs to give it to them.
In normal cases you can assume it’s ‘Give to’ or ‘Show to’ but depending on the context/puzzle it may be also ‘Use’.
Of course it can happen via dialog too and sometimes games with ‘Give’ verbs aren’t consistent if one, the other or both works.
I don’t really like having the ‘Look at’ verb as an arbitrary inventory item.
When we are talking about games with two-verb interfaces + inventory I’d prefer having separate buttons for ‘Look at’ and ‘Use’ (mouse or controller) plus a dedicated button on-screen (e.g. a magnifying glass) especially for use with touch controls (since something like long-touch quite sucks).
Since we’ve already removed most of the verbs from the screen, the inventory will likely be a collapsible one (like Sam&Max or Broken Age). Either such magnifying glass button should be still accessible when the inventory is shown or the inventory screen has a dedicated one.
This leads to a more complicated / less intuitive UI: Why should I first talk to a person to give him/her/it an object?
This is an important fact: With only USE you can’t differentiate between the actions. The games chooses the correct one for you.
A “mixture” had the late Sierra adventures: With the right-click you cycle through some “objects”, including an inventory item and a magnifying glass.
To each their own. I think it can generate some interesting puzzles. The red gel decoder in TWP is kind of a Look At verb in that it reveals more information about an item. I wish more adventure games let you interact with items rather than just being told by the character what happened and breaking the fourth wall (which I don’t mind, but it’s worth saying).
The “look at” verb is one of the most used. If you turn it into an inventory object, the player has to open the inventory, select the glasses, (maybe close the inventory) and click on another object. That’s not funny, if you have more then 10 objects in the game.
But that is a special case: You have to use the red gel decoder only only once in the whole game.
It’s funny you should ask that, because I was thinking the opposite. I don’t typically walk up to people and hand them something without speaking to them first. Especially if it’s a dangerous object like a chainsaw.
It’s also the most pointless, because an object can be described when it’s picked up the first time or, as is the case with many hotspots, it can just default to Look At behavior (e.g. The action figures in Delores’ room.) If it’s an object that can be pushed or pulled, do a Look At on first click, and then following clicks exhibit the Push and Pull behavior. If the player pushes or pulls without solving the puzzle in x amount of clicks, then print another description.
Edit: I should add the reminder that I’m just giving an opinion to OP’s question: “Do you think that verbs can be removed without breaking the game experience in a significant way?” I like verbs, and I like the letterbox view of the game.