every game ever made consists of boxes and turrets(as you describe them)... some just use more than others and in different ways... those legs you can attack on certain monsters to cripple them, that's still just boxes... say a dragon can be 1 box for the entire thing or more boxes, 1 for each hittable part... but it's still just boxes and turrets.
The suggestion that this is beyond today's technology is laughable.
Asheron's Call was released in 1999. You could aim your attacks high middle or low and it actually affected both your hit percentage (depending on what level the mob was aiming it's attack) and your damage (some mobs had different armor levels on different body parts). Every mob also had one or more elements that it was weaker to. You would have a variety of weapons for a variety of weapon damage: pierce/bludgeon/slash fire/acid/frost/electric. At the time every weapon type didn't have all attack types available, if you were a swordsman...no bludge. Weapons have been revamped so I believe that has changed. It had a patron/vassal allegiance system which would reward the patron by giving the patron a portion of the experience earned by the vassal (without reducing what the vassal earned). It had both sandbox and themepark elements. It also has had free monthly patches going on 13 years...yes it's still active.
If you could program attack height and damage variety by body part/damage element in 1999, you can do that and more today.
Ed: forgot that you could also vary speed & power, slower bigger hits vs faster smaller hits
Last edited by dcphx; 2013-08-20 at 03:57 AM.
There are games where you attack parts of monsters. Quite a few actually.