Any bets as to whether or not we can target specific locations with melee attacks this time around? I wasn't able to spy any clear examples of melee combat in VATs from the gameplay footage I've seen thus far. Melee combat has always been rather lackluster for me unless I get lucky enough to swat a weapon out of the enemy's hands or cripple their head and stagger them.

They haven't shown alot of melee gameplay, but we did see the baseball bat, and I swore I saw a Powerfist right before that arena takedown

In the gameplay demo it was fast, but we've seen the player pistol whipping enemies that rush up on them while they are shooting, and also hitting them with a rifle. And we know bayonets are something you can craft to attach to the end of rifles.

Very true. I'm looking forward to seeing more of the melee mechanics for this go-round. Hopefully they didn't simply add in pistol whipping and say, "Welp, that's enough for melee options."

Here is hoping we can headbutt, elbow, knee, kick and hey why not grappling while we are at it.

I hope they've improved upon the combat A.i. there looks to be some awesome melee weapons to play with

Anyone think there will be a specific melee button? Or do you think it will just automatically pistol whip if they get too close?

No way to tell from what we've seen. The player does do it twice in a row to the raider. First swinging from above their head and coming down on top of it, then coming across from left to right. We have seen a lot of evidence in the gameplay demo that enemies now respond to impact forces - i.e. they stumble back, stagger, and react in the appropriate reaction to the incoming force. For instance in the same clip where the player is pistol whipping the raider - the first blow sends the raider's head snapping back, and the second blow from left to right actually forces the raider's head sideways in the same direction and he stumbles to the side.