This made me think of Free Guy. Seen it? The NPCs in that movie could think, apparently, but had obvious cognitive guardrails to keep their routines intact. Interesting.
NPC scripts can be extremely dynamic and convincing so you’re “thinking” can trick you into thinking you’re not an NPC. NPCs are almost always map geofenced. If there are places/actions/ideas you can’t seem to access no matter how hard you try… perhaps you’re geofenced.