One player just managed to finish Fallout 4 without ever stepping foot outside Vault 111, according to their Xbox (spoiler alert: they definitely stepped foot outside of Vault 111).
User TheJFG4 posted on the Fallout 4 subreddit yesterday that they’d unlocked 83 out of 84 achievements on the Xbox version of FO4. The final achievement they’d yet to unlock is likely the very first one any other player would unlock during their first 30 minutes with the game: the “War Never Changes” achievement.
You unlock “War Never Changes” by, according to the achievement's own description, entering “The Wasteland”. By that it means you simply have to exit Vault 111, the Vault that your protagonist finds themselves in during the opening segment of the game.
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So, how is this possible? Well in classic Bethesda fashion, it’s due to a bug.
It might be a little harsh to blame Bethesda for this one however, as the fault here probably lies with the Xbox One’s Quick Resume feature - not with Fallout 4.
You see, TheJFG4 did step outside Vault 111. It’s sort of the only way they could have unlocked the other 83 achievements, especially on Xbox systems where it’s a lot harder to unlock achievements through cheating (versus, say, on PC where it’s ridiculously easy).
It would appear that what actually happened is that TheJFG4 completed all of Fallout 4’s achievements in one playthrough, but the very first achievement they unlocked bugged out and never triggered due to the Quick Resume feature.
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As many other players in the thread pointed out, this happens a lot with Xbox achievements. One player noted that “Has to do with Quick Resume I presume. Never use quick resume if you care for achievements. Messed up my completion of the Arkham games…”
So unfortunately it’s not literally possible to complete the game legitimately without leaving Vault 11, but hey - at least TheJFG4 can fool others into thinking it is.