Skyrim is still a great game even today, but its movement controls are starting to feel a bit dated–there's no sliding, no vaulting, and no grappling hook to swing through the Nordish mountains like some sort of Viking Spider-Man.
But what really makes Skyrim feel old is how everything moves in third-person mode. Modern action RPGs have a fluidity to both the player and camera movement that makes everything feel like you’re playing an action movie, whereas Skyrim’s turn-and-slash controls don’t have nearly the same sort of impact.
Until now. Introducing the True Directional Movement mod from Ersh, a new mod that “modernizes third-person gameplay” in Skyrim. The intent of the mod is to make Skyrim’s third-person gameplay feel like Assassin’s Creed, God of War, or Horizon Zero Dawn, allowing the player to move and attack freely in any direction.
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Along with free movement comes a new target lock function that lets you keep an eye on the specific enemy you want dead. It's more than just keeping the targeted enemy dead center in the camera as there's functionality designed to avoid awkward camera angles and motion sickness in the player.
Target tracking is also accompanied by headtracking in town. Rather than your character's face pointing at the closest NPC, it'll instead track towards the NPC your character is actually facing.
Instead of health being displayed right underneath the compass, a new healthcare widget shows how fast you're killing your target in a bar that hovers beside your enemy's head. There are also two types of projectile functionality, depending on how you prefer to shoot fireballs at dragons: predictive targeting aims for where your target is expected to be based on its current heading, while guided targeting turns your fireballs into homing missiles that are almost guaranteed to hit.
Combine True Directional Movement with an enhanced animation pack and you'll feel like you're playing an RPG that was designed in 2018 rather than 2011.
Head on over to Nexus Mods to download the True Directional Movement mod for your next Skyrim run. Keep in mind you'll also need SKSE (and the address library for the SKSU Plugins), SkyUI, and MCM Helper to configure the mods. Nemesis is optional, but highly recommended for head tracking to work.