How many steps are there actually on the path to High Hrothgar

Question

The title says it all.

It is mentioned several times that there are 7000 steps on the path to High Hrothgar. Are there actually 7000 steps or are the NPCs exaggerating?

Answer

Erm, it doesn't matter whether the game world is "scaled," as it's a very variable scaling. The distance between important locations is shortened significantly, but houses are only a bit smaller than real life, and objects are 1:1. Here's an interview with Todd Howard (check around the 47:00 mark, a partial transcription is here):

The Greybeards, the guys who live up on the throat of the world, who are the masters of the voice, they find out about this fairly quickly, and they shout your name. They shout Dovahkiin to the wind, and it kind of rumbles through the world. The mountains shake when they call you. And you think, "What was that?" and someone says, "That was the Greybeards calling you. To walk the 7,000 steps up the throat of the world to meet them."

I have been promised 7,000 steps, and I am going to count them. Our world artists are amazing. We have just an amazing team, and they put so much detail in the world, so they didn't blink when I said, "It must have 7,000 steps." When you look at all the stuff we have in the world, 7,000 steps obviously is not that hard.

And really, logically, it doesn't make much sense to not do it that way. I mean, if it had 3000 steps, why wouldn't they just say it had 3000 steps?

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