Admittedly I don't know how it would be determined. Maybe the determining factor is if you decide to save them or not. Shoot a dudes hand off, he surrenders and you help him. That would appeal to tons of players.

Same way it works for the player character excluding of course the head and torso. But instead of getting crippled the NPCs get mutilated.

I always thought dismemberment was cool (in games that is), but never liked how it lead to insta-death. I hope NPCs will fight on or give up when losing a limb, not just exploding into a million pieces.

While I could see this as making the game more challenging such that traditionally any maiming of any limb on any enemy has been an auto-kill, excepting in the Player-Character's case where it just equates to "disabled", I don't see it being implemented in the vanilla game.

I'd certainly enjoy such an element being applied to Synths, Chem Crazed Raiders, and Super Mutants, because, for one, it'd make them even more difficult to stop if the only kill shots were to the head or torso.

Implementing such, however, would likely send Bethesda back to the ESRB folks for a new rating, since there's probably a difference in maiming = death compared to maiming = horror show still coming at you.

Hopefully, at least someone can mod such a thing so that maiming no longer auto-kills.

What if dismemberment still happen only upon killing blows but there was a death animation instead of instant ragdolling ?

If they do not put in the death cry of "Tis but a scratch" I will be sad

FO game's are hit point based aren't they? When your point's run out, you die. I think it would be difficult to work in, although [censored] cool if they did.

Not purely hit point based, there are limbs you can cripple to lower stats while still living.

In the E3 showcase during the combat montage there is a scene where the dog brings down an enemy on the edge of a river or lake. The enemy is missing his right arm. Can't tell if it's a ghoul or synth but it does look like there may be a least some capacity for NPCs to be missing appendages.

It's a couple scenes after the Mirelurk Queen.

Lol!

After watching the E3 presentation again, the Sole survivor blows off a Raider's arm below the elbow and... the raider falls dead.