What was the point of each verb/action in Monkey Island?

I played the first Monkey Island more than 20 years ago and I remember that the user interface was showing many verbs/actions (give, open, close, pick up, etc.) to choose from. If I remember well I finished the game without ever using any of those actions and I always right-clicked on objects to execute the default action on them.

Was there any special use of the actions that I missed ?

Solution 1:

Short answer:
It's an old game and its predecessors used even more verbs.

Long answer:
To understand why they had all those verbs, you have to understand where it came from. Before LucasArts (née LucasFilms) started making Adventure games, Sierra was the driving force in the industry. In Sierra's adventure games, movement was done with the mouse, but all other interactions had to be typed.

Maniac Mansion, LucasFilm's first adventure game, started with a list of 15 verbs they thought were the most commonly used in adventure games.

It's important to note that Maniac Mansion didn't have auto-highlighting when you moved your mouse over something. "What Is" was used for this. "New Kid" was used to switch between the 3 characters on your team.

Either Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade or Secret of Monkey Island also introduced the concept of a default action when you right-click. Right-click will seldom actually solve a puzzle even if what you need to do is the "obvious" action.

These verbs changed slightly over LucasArts first few games (except Loom) until you got the original Secret of Monkey Island interface.

You'll notice that Read, Unlock, and Fix were merged into Use, while What is was replaced with Look at when auto-highlighting was added.

However, LucasArts realized that more of these verbs were extraneous and pared it down even further in their next game, LeChuck's Revenge: Monkey Island 2.

Turn On and Turn Off got merged into Use, while Walk to just lost its place entirely. Instead, you just click on something that's not an item and you walk there. At this point, LucasArts also changed the inventory from being a list of item names to having graphics for the items.

This was used in all subsequent games including the CD version of Secret of Monkey Island (pictured in the question), up until Sam and Max: Hit the Road.

Sam and Max was the first LucasArts game to remove the actions from the screen UI, giving the game designers more space to actually have the playable part of the game. LucasArts remaining SCUMM games did this is various ways:

• Sam and Max had the cursor change depending on the current action. Right-click switches actions instead of being the default action. Items are accessed by clicking on the box.
• The Dig had no actions, items are accessed by moving your mouse near the bottom of the screen.
• Full Throttle and Curse of Monkey Island used a 3-item Verb Coin that only appeared when you held the left mouse button down. Items are accessed by pressing the Tab key.

(All above images are from Wikipedia)

Solution 2:

The short version: Back in the days not everyone had a two button mouse.

But besides that, there were clickables that offered more than just the default verb. The defaults are there for convenience.

For example, in most of those old point and click adventures, you had to specifically open or close a door. But you could as well look at it and you might even be able to just use it.

Solution 3:

Surely you must have missed all the descriptions, which were often quite fun.

Apart from that, basically nothing, just look at how it has evolved in future versions.

BTW, are you sure you never used them? I find it quite hard to believe: could you use objects and combine them without using the actions?

Solution 4:

If I recall clearly, you didn't miss much if at all. While there were many verbs, you didn't really need to use all of them. The times where you could have used a more specific verb (such as open/close) could also be done by the generic use verb now present in nearly all current adventure games.

There are only a few moments where you were required to use those "specialty" verbs in the monkey games as part of the puzzle (such as opening the safe by pushing/pulling on the handle). I believe there were also some comedic moments when you could pull on some things and you get a funny response or do something silly, but not absolutely required.

Nowadays, most of the verbs have been cleaned out. A lot of that due to the fact that it cluttered up the game and made it more difficult to grasp. All the more reason why many of those other verbs were useless and how the ubiquitous use verb remains.