Currently, yes, you do need to learn how to code in some kind of programming language to extract data out of video games. Bones are a bit tricky and kind of requires the equivalent knowledge of a 2nd or 3rd year computer science student. This is because the data for bones in a video game is typically in a format that requires building a tree (but not always, it depends on the format of the data).
The joint data in a game typically looks like this.
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joint #1 ID, parent ID, name, position, orientation
joint #2 ID, parent ID, name, position, orientation
joint #3 ID, parent ID, name, position, orientation
If you can find that data in the file, great. Then you have to determine if the position is absolute or relative. Test for absolute first. If you draw lines from each joint position to its respective parent joint position and you see a good skeleton in your modeler, joint positions are absolute and you're done. If you see an odd looking, but symmetrical skeleton, the joint positions are relative and you must code a joint tree.
Now, if both absolute and relative give messed up skeletons, you either found and tested the wrong data or the game uses some extra transformation(s) on the joints. We are now headed into some complex territory here and I usually give up at this point. Resident Evil 6 is a perfect example here. It's easy to find the joints, but both absolute and relative tests failed and Capcom uses something a little more complex and unless you know someone from Capcom it's probably a good idea to give up.
But in the easy case, where joint positions are absolute, you can code up a skeleton in an OBJ file in roughly 100 lines of code. The tricks are:
#1 Find the data.
#2 Read the data.
#3 Save skeleton to file.
Chris, chroxx, is doing DoA5, and I think if he can't find the joints then it might be really difficult to extract. I need to see some sample files (PM some to me if you want). If I can find the data and the joints are absolute, I'll show you how to code out the skeleton the easy way (which will still require you to parent bones in your modeler though).