Todd Howard doesn't have the best track record when it comes to making big claims about his company's games. Throughout the launch of Starfield, Howard made much of the interplanetary travel systems and seamless spaceship control, much of which turned out to be, at the very least, exaggerated.
The more long in the tooth gamer might also remember his comments about the iconic home of the Greybeards, High Hrothgar, in the run up to and immediately after the launch of Skyrim.
Within the game's lore, and according to many of the NPCs in the game, there are over 7000 steps up to High Hrothgar. When asked about this, Howard responded by saying he made sure that each of those steps were there himself. Now in all fairness, he was absolutely joking when he said that, but the true number doesn't even come close.
In a post on Reddit, one user confirmed that they had taken the drastic step of counting every step on the way up, and the true number is a comparatively measly 748 steps.
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The maths does tangentially back Howard up here though, as one user points out that the world scaling could be the main reason behind the significantly smaller number: "Congrats, you've measured this game's Distance Dilution Effect."
They continued, "All open world games share this phenomenon, games from other genres will show this too but it's usually not nearly as noticeable. Basically put, the developers want to create huge worlds, however travel time and memory limitations will always limit how big this worlds can get. So things get scaled down."
Fortunately for Bethesda, that scaling down approach did little to effect just how enormous and magnificent the world felt when Skyrim released. With The Elder Scrolls VI supposedly on the way, we'll see just how big the game is with the massively improved technology on offer.
Topics: Bethesda, Skyrim, The Elder Scrolls