Thanks to a video posted by Reddit user OkPain2022, we’re given a glimpse of how pickpocketing will work. Of course, you’ll still need to approach them by crouching, and after you do that, a prompt will appear, allowing you to steal from them. After that, another menu will appear, showing you what they have and the odds of you successfully stealing said items.
It had NPCs, just because they weren’t “human” models they decided to market it as a world that didn’t need NPCs to tell a story…even though it did…and they added human NPCs later anyway.