This Skyrim third-person mod makes third-person look playable

Skyrim is more than the sum of its parts, which is another way of saying that many of Skyrim's parts are janky. High on the list is its third-person camera, which was rough around the edges in 2011 and feels extremely old fashioned here in 2021.

Enter, as always, the modders. The True Directional Movement mod available from Nexus Mods offers "modernized third person gameplay", and it looks like a huge improvement.

Here's a video of it in action:

As spotted by Eurogamer, the mod's creator Ershin set out to offer true directional movement but greatly expanded the scope of the mod overtime to offer a full third-person gameplay and UI overhaul similar "to modern action RPGs."

Its new features include the ability to move and attack in any direction while in third-person, target lock designed to suit, a smoother transition when mounting and dismounting animals, headtracking, and more. There are GIFs of most of these features in action over on its Nexus Mods page. For example:

The mod is designed such that it should work with a lot of other Skyrim mods, but unfortunately it's only available for the Skyrim Special Edition. On the subject of a version of the mod for Legendary Edition, the mod's creator says "I'm sorry, but no. Special Edition's engine is much more stable and frameworks like CommonLibSSE allow much easier implementation of advanced plugins. We should move on."

If you're looking for other great community works, check out our list of the best Skyrim mods. It has plenty of options whether you're playing either the original or Special Edition.