That is unless we're given some god send and they actually begin to know what they're doing.
You saw Skyrim, right? stuff poor dragon AI which makes me think they are going to put unscripted behemoth AI in this next game. Not to mention Skyrim has very, very, VERY, VERY, VERY few RPG elements so Skyrim is not even classified as an RPG. It's a loving action adventure basically because they had to water it down for casuals. And there is still NPCs that can't be killed and yet just turn unconscious.
loving New Vegas at least allowed the player to kill every single person. A person killed had a negative outcome towards it and there were no such things as an unconscious NPC except for companions.
BETHESDA IS LAZY! Instead of making you fail the quest or forcing you to take an alternate quest route they just flag the NPC as unconscious so they don't have to make an alternate quest storyline. This is the basis of a very badly planned RPG. Killing some important character in a quest should have a negative consequence making the quest harder or impossible to achieve. If you don't like that then don't kill the NPC. There shouldn't have to be a handicapped system telling you to not kill someone because you're loving handicapped and you just want his hat.