A few disclosures 1. I am not good at shooting 2. I'm playing on "very hard" 3. I've played about 2-3 hours

I like to play my games at maximum immersion and roleplay as hard as I can. I like to keep my laptop open so I can keep a journal for my character along with my playthrough. It's really fun and enhances the experience.

But something I've noticed in a lot of games is that enemies don't die when you shoot them. Or rather, they do die, but it takes way more bullets than is believable. Some games explain this, most don't.

I'm not complaining about this fact, it's a game design decision, and one of its effects is making the late game really satisfying. From the clips I've seen I know I'll be one-shotting these guys before long.

What I'm struggling with is that even on the first story mission, enemies were taking 2-4 shots to the head to die. Then once I got control of my character I started doing NCPD calls, and these low level street thugs are taking full magazines from an AR without going down. Some of them are wearing armor, and so I can somewhat dismiss it as "future body armor is really good" (though I strongly suspect this effect doesn't carry through to the player). But when the enemy isn't wearing armor or I shoot them in an unarmored place (like the face), I expect them to take damage like a human being getting hit with a bullet (especially if I'm getting blood splatter animations).

So, in universe, what's the explanation for how people (honestly including me) can just tank shots to the face? Are personal shields a thing like in Borderlands and a few other games? Are we secretly all shooting rubber bullets? Is subdermal armor both really common and really good?

And out of universe, how can I spot over-leveled enemies? Maybe I'm just dumb, but they don't seem to have a level indicator in my HUD, and since even unarmored opponents have this problem, visual cues aren't enough.