This Skyrim mod adds "modernised third-person gameplay"

Publish date: 2023-06-06

If you ever felt like Skyrim's third-person gameplay could do with an update to give it a more modern action-RPG feel, this could be just the ticket.

"True Directional Movement - Modernised Third Person Gameplay" is a mod by Ershin for Skyrim: Special Edition on PC that, well, does exactly what it says on the tin. The mod overhauls Skyrim's third-person gameplay to allow you to move and attack from any direction, while there's also a target lock component to help you keep track of enemies. This target lock comes with an animated health bar widget above enemies, with bosses getting their own (much larger) health bars.

Here's a demonstration of what all this looks like in practice:

The mod also boasts projectile aim support during target lock to help with spell-casting, with players given two options to choose from. "Predictive aim" will take the target's velocity into account and hit the enemy at their projected location - but this can miss if they suddenly change direction. "Homing projectiles" will almost guarantee you get a solid hit.

On top of this, the mod adds head tracking to allow the player to look at their current target or dialogue speaker. On some occasions that might be the same person, I guess.

The mod was originally uploaded on Sunday, but it already has an impressive 16k downloads and 1.4k endorsements. Note that this is for Skyrim Special Edition only, and there are a number of prerequisites: you'll need SKSE, Address Library for SKSE Plugins, and SkyUI for this to work. To take it for a spin yourself, you can find the mod page here.

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