In my view, NPCs may seem soulless, but they have souls. All human beings have a soul, their true self that is unique and precious to God. NPCs, however, are most likely dissociated with their souls. They are associated with the programming, which they have ingested and adopted fully, like a soul replacement or surrogate.

One perspective on "trauma" is that trauma is essentially the result of dissociation with true self (aka soul).

Ontologically, if one actually considers NPCs, Marxists or others as "soulless", one is in danger of slipping into one of the worst problems of atheistic Marxism: in Marxism, God does not exist, and thus human beings have no eternal soul or value, and so, slaughtering millions of them is not an issue as long as it advances the Revolution, aka the March towards true Communistic Freedom.

Philosophically, believing human beings - any human being - to be soulless opens up the idea that they can be dismissed or abused or justifiably treated however one likes.

Conversely, viewing that each person, no matter how corrupt or who dissociated with their own true nature they become, is originally a creation and child of God, beings one to the view that values that thing in all people that God values, thus establishing a closer resonance with the Creator.

Evil constantly wants to temp human beings to view each other as scraps, refuse, as valueless. But nothing that the Creator ever created can be 100% devoid of value.

Well, that's my view. I don't want to belabor the point, but when you can weep even for your enemy and what they have lost (i.e. their own souls), their ability to influence your mind is gradually reduced to zero.