After playing Dead Space I want to know which ways exist, to destroy objects and dismember creatures.
And no, I don´t want to make Dead Space...
I know some ways, but I don´t understand the technical side of some of them.

Quake II made it with simple animation\replacement of the Model, so that the injuries were predefined.
Disadvantage: you shoot the legs and the head of the enforcer disappears... strange. So I don´t want to use this for my project.

Turok 2 had one centerentity with attached limbs, with the limbs having own hitboxes.
If the limb was hit, it was removed and the centerentity reacted to it.
This was not bad, but the disadvantage was, that it was
clearly visible, that the Models were attached.
They had ugly seams. With machines there is no problem, because they are assembled,
but for living creatures this is not, what I want to achieve.

Then Dead Space has seamless models with fixed points, where they can be dismembered.
The same thing for Mortal Kombat 2011. There is absolutly no visible hint, that there is anything removeable...
Something similar I would like to use, even if that is still not perfect.
But I have no clue, how this has been done.
This seamless-thing is, what is most important to me, to have the models look consistent.

Then I read about a Metal Gear game, I dont know the title,
where a guy with a sword is (or will be) the main protagonist, and they wrote,
that it is possible in the game, to cut ANYTHING that is destroyable in the world DYNAMICALLY.
The way he slashes is the exact way the blade cuts.
I imagine it like the slice plane in the WED editor for cutting blocks.
If it is true, how could this be achieved?
I think there is a huge lot of calculating going on there...
That would be my favorite (of course) but I don´t think, that could be realistic to be achieved by me.

Anyone knows how that all works?
Do you know any other additional ways used?