For early first-person shooter games like Castle Wolfenstein in 1991, character deaths used simple animations without ragdoll physics due to technical limitations. Later, Hitman: Codename 47 in 2000 featured more advanced physics where bodies would react realistically to forces. Modern games use engines like Euphoria that power dynamic motion, virtual muscles, and limited AI to generate varied, context-sensitive reactions from non-player characters to create highly realistic movement.

1. For the earlier first person shooter games like Castle Wolfenstein (1991), the deaths
for the NPCʼs (Non-player Characters) are done with simple animations and no
ragdoll effects. Back in the day, this was far easier to do, and they didnʼt have the
technology back them to create realistic looking ragdoll death physics. They added a
simple death animation, which also, for computers back then, would have saved
processor power, and a simple animation would be the same and just replay over
and over again, but it would look bad because if you shoot someone in the head and
they die, and shoot someone in the leg and they die, the death animation will be
exactly the same.
Hitman: Codename 47
Game Physics
Castle Wolfenstein
Later on, Hitman: Codeman 47 was released in the year 2000, and unlike
Wolfenstein, Hitman had far more advanced physics. When making the game,
they must make a soft of skeleton for the character, and this would be the same
for every human character in the game, and they would be called ridged bodies.
They wouldnʼt react to being shot, but upon death, the body would become limp
like and the player could drag the body along the ground to hide it, and the body
parts of the body would move accordingly to how fast the player was moving,
and if he was moving up a slope or etc...

2. Dynamic Motion is the motion that NPCʼs will react to things around them in the game world. For example, they will react to being shot at,
something falling on top of them, correcting their stance if pushed or moved, moving their heads and generally being able to look like they
are aware of the world around them, making things much more realistic.
The Engine that can create this motion is the Euphoria engine, which is used in ʻGrand Theft Auto IVʼ
Unlike ragdoll, the Euphoria engine allows for the NPCʼs to have a skeleton, like the Hitman games, but more advanced, but also on top
of that, the Euphoria engine gives the NPCʼs virtual muscles, allowing for even a greater variation of movements.
Euphoria also has a small amount of Artificial Intelligence integrated into it, allowing for the characters to have behaviors, which means
they can run away from gun fire, stare at the player if they are doing something strange, or as like at the start of this paragraph, react to
the world around them.
Euphoria uses the CPU to create dynamic movement, which means each time something happens, even if it happens exactly the same,
the engine will create different kinds of movements. For example, if you take two characters and have them both be shot in the same
shoulder, their reactions would be different. One might fall to the floor, one might stager backwards.