Nearly 15 years ago, an incredibly dedicated Skyrim fan decided to walk the 7,000 steps from Ivarstead to High Hrothgar and actually count them all. There were only around 748.

It's become a bit of a joke with fans, but Bethesda did try to be accurate with the Throat of the World trek—the problem was that it started to engulf the region.

To celebrate the studio's 40th anniversary, several developers shared memories of their time working on some of its most iconic games, including associate art director Dan Lee, who was responsible for the infamous High Hrothgar steps. And he explained that he earnestly wanted to stay lore accurate, but it just wasn't feasible.

"I would look at the mountain from various viewpoints and tried to keep the shape interesting," Lee explained. "Now, I love trying to be as faithful to lore or real-life as possible and I did my darnedest to find a way to fit all 7,000 steps into the storied path. However, my best attempt to do so included extending far past Ivarstead, wrapping around the mountain and ending near Whiterun in the frozen tundra. It turns out, 7,000 is quite a lot!"

In fairness to Lee, very little of Skyrim is lore accurate when it comes to scale anyway. Unless you believe Windhelm has a population of 61 , and that three farms is enough to sustain what used to be the capital city. The steps are actually a pretty good way to imagine how big Skyrim should be, outside of video game logic.

Source link