Targeting Recticles

I was watching this video:
[video=youtube;3MpfjYoa7KI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MpfjYoa7KI[/video]

The aiming recticle is in the middle of the screen, but the bow fires to the right at an angle. Since the character isn't directly behind the recticle, yet you're looking straight through the recticle, it might connect with a monster at a certain distance but not connect if the monster is slightly further away.

Let's say Y is the character, x is the targeting recticle, m is the monster, | is filler, / is the line of fire, Z is where the player looks straight out front from and we're taking an aerial view (directly overhead) of the scene.

|||||m (Hit)
||||/
|||/|x
||/
|/
Y||||Z

In this situation, the projectile hits the monster. However, if the monster is just slightly further away, it'd still be in line with the recticle (since the player is looking at it directly through the centre of the recticle) and assuming that the bow continues to fire at the same angle, this should happen.

|||||m/
||||||/ (Miss)
|||||/
||||/
|||/|x
||/
|/
Y||||Z

You'd miss the monster, but it'd still be in the targeting recticle. So what I want to know is, how do coders account for this sort of thing? Do they make it such that the gun/bow fires at a different angle depending on the distance of the target from the recticle? If not, how does this work?

A third person shooter reticle isn't a set distance from the perspective.

To clarify, the reticle moves toward and away from the screen depending on what it's focused on.