Just for my understanding, what is that "basic airplane" you're getting? I thought you would still be using the control column to provide inputs to the fly-by-wire computers. I didn't think the 777 had direct mechanical linkages to all control surfaces.
When the 777 is manually switched to "Direct" mode you are effectively removing the Primary Flight Computers and may control the aircraft via unmodified commands using ANALOGUE electrical signals that are passed directly to the control surface actuators.
Max