This is on the right track. You actually sort of need both but it's important to get the language right.
Objects, particularly highly sophisticated objects, generally have minimal requirements that determine who can use them successfully. Requirements can be anything from strength to knowledge. At the same time people have skills (or don't have skills) and attributes which lets them use objects. Some people are more skilled than others.
Modelling this requires both the ability to ask an object "What are the minimal requirements needed for somebody to use you?" and the ability to ask a player "How skilled are you really at using this object?"
As a smell test, it doesn't make much sense to ask a sword "can I use you?" How would the sword know? But you can ask the sword, say, "how heavy are you?" It does make some sense to ask a person "can you use this sword?"
And yes, it's not clear at all that every object type corresponds to a first-class language type. You might have a Sword type... but in reality, unless the game is very sophisticated, all bladed weapons do pretty much the same thing. This is where it's useful to take a step back and focus not so much on nouns but also on verbs in our domain language. Swords, axes, ninja stars -- they are all cutting damage. Spears, knifes, polearms -- they are all stabbing damage.
It does make some sense to ask a person "can you use this sword?"
Does it really? I mean, if we're talking about an actual person then sure, since a person can think about the problem and come up with a creative answer. But the object representing a person in a game? That would imply that the "person" object must know all about swords and the requirements for using each of them. How is that better than requiring the "sword" object to know about people and their capabilities?
Swords have attributes (e.g. weight). People have attributes (e.g. strength). Whether a particular person can wield a particular sword is not a question either a sword or a person can answer without introducing unnatural dependencies. It is a property of the environment in which the player and sword both exist, and IMHO is best modelled as some form of external "rule" object, or via a multiple-dispatch method (if your language supports that paradigm).
Objects, particularly highly sophisticated objects, generally have minimal requirements that determine who can use them successfully. Requirements can be anything from strength to knowledge. At the same time people have skills (or don't have skills) and attributes which lets them use objects. Some people are more skilled than others.
Modelling this requires both the ability to ask an object "What are the minimal requirements needed for somebody to use you?" and the ability to ask a player "How skilled are you really at using this object?"
As a smell test, it doesn't make much sense to ask a sword "can I use you?" How would the sword know? But you can ask the sword, say, "how heavy are you?" It does make some sense to ask a person "can you use this sword?"
And yes, it's not clear at all that every object type corresponds to a first-class language type. You might have a Sword type... but in reality, unless the game is very sophisticated, all bladed weapons do pretty much the same thing. This is where it's useful to take a step back and focus not so much on nouns but also on verbs in our domain language. Swords, axes, ninja stars -- they are all cutting damage. Spears, knifes, polearms -- they are all stabbing damage.