I read (almost) all posts in this topic - which I never saw, there seems to be a lot of topics from July and August that I never read - and I found it to be an interesting discussion… but.
But the focus on “puzzles and what reasoning is behind them when the player solves them” conflicts with my experience with Monkey Island 2.
To be honest, I learned right now that sawing the peg leg was needed to get the carpenter out of his shop. So, did I solve the puzzle by sheer luck?
No. I’d say by role playing. When I played Monkey Island 2 I was being Guybrush Threepwood, a sly young pirate. I had a saw in my inventory. There was a sleeping pirate with a wooden leg in front of me. It was the obvious thing to do, since I was Guybrush Threepwood. I wasn’t even thinking “this might advance me in the game”. I was just thinking “yeah, let’s see how you like it when you wake up and find out your leg is gone”.
The same goes for imprisoning Kate. I didn’t attach the poster thinking “let’s put her in jail so I steal her stuff”. I did it because I thought that was an extremely piratey thing to do, making innocent people go to jail.
My experience with those “puzzles” isn’t then “I solved an obstacle in my journey”, but “I did stuff for fun that later happened to luckily help me in my journey”. It happens in a lot of plots anyway, in movies and books, that a character takes advantage of something that happened in the past without any insight on the future consequences.
Focusing just on puzzles and reasoning destroys the feeling of “freedom” or, let’s say, “open-worldness” (is it even a word?). You are now reminding your player that you’re feeding him riddles instead of making him live an adventure.