Fallout 4 | Ep. 60 – Going Where Todd Howard Never Intended
Sixty episodes into Fallout 4, and apparently the Commonwealth still hasn’t learned to keep me contained. Tonight we’re heading beyond sensible exploration and discovering what happens when curiosity beats self-preservation.
This was our finale: one last Saturday night in the wasteland, beginning with some unfinished exploration and ending somewhere Todd Howard probably hoped we would never look. Invisible walls were coming down, water was disappearing, and Fallout 4 was about to be inspected from angles it was absolutely not built to survive.
☢️ About Fallout 4
As the Sole Survivor of Vault 111, Fallout 4 drops us into a Commonwealth devastated by nuclear war, where ruined cities, mutated wildlife, factions, Vaults and an unreasonable quantity of collectible junk are waiting around every corner.
Every choice shapes the wasteland, but after 60 streams our priorities had evolved somewhat. Saving civilisation was done. Now we wanted to find out what was behind the scenery.
🧭 Where We Are in the Journey
This was episode 60 and the final stream of our Fallout 4 playthrough. The main story was finished, the DLC completed, Far Harbor explored and Nuka-World/Land/Place/Park/Resort/Location/whatever-it’s-called dealt with.
After exploring the eastern coastline last time, our finale had two objectives: investigate overlooked locations in the west, then activate noclip and go behind the scenes.
This journey ultimately lasted 60 streams and 121 hours, 4 minutes and 16 seconds, stretching across a year and a half of Saturday nights.
🚧 What Happens in This Episode
We began where so many adventures have begun: Sanctuary. Carla’s Brahmin was still standing on the roof of the main building, naturally, and after 60 streams it had become enough of a mascot to deserve another screenshot. We checked the inventory, made sure everything was in order and headed out for one final stretch of conventional Commonwealth exploration.
I’d noticed a dam on the river towards the western side of the map that we’d somehow never visited, so we fast-travelled to Oberland Station and started walking towards it. Along the way we discovered Relay Tower 1DL-109 before reaching the dam at Boston City Works. Inside was essentially one room containing a few odds and ends, which obviously meant we had to loot it. There was absolutely no reason to collect anything on the final stream, but after 121 hours the loot goblin instinct wasn’t going to disappear now.
From there we pushed onwards through Forest Grove Marsh. There was another unexplored lake to the south-west, so the plan became to head down towards Mass Pike Interchange and investigate that area. Naturally, some icons further along the river distracted me and we ended up at Westing Estate instead.
Our recently discovered plasma rifle continued proving that we’d apparently spent months carrying around one of our best weapons without actually using it. This thing was absolutely mincing everything we encountered, turning enemies into glowing green goo within a couple of shots. After watching it repeatedly liquefy the local population, there was really only one appropriate name for it: the Soylent Green Maker.
Continuing south brought us to Egret Tours Marina, where the Commonwealth revealed the one enemy even overwhelming firepower couldn’t save me from: mines. Somebody had been very enthusiastic about laying them around the place and, rather than deactivating them like a sensible person, I kept walking across them. Mine… explosion… another mine… another explosion. Our power armour began deteriorating rather quickly, while anyone arriving in chat was treated to the sight of me being blown up left, right and centre.
Inside the marina we met a rather disgruntled customer, but managed to talk her down and make peace. We had a look around the upper floor afterwards and technically robbed her, although she didn’t seem particularly bothered about it.
Further south we reached Cutler Bend, which immediately reminded me of the little settlement pods in Mass Effect — OYG I love Mass Effect. From there we began working back towards the route we’d originally intended to follow, travelling through Robotics Pioneer Park towards the cabin and treehouse area. I decided setting a waypoint would probably help. Instead, I accidentally fast-travelled.
We did eventually reach the lake and began working our way around it, passing the lakeside cabin while staying well clear of the Mass Fusion Disposal Site. We followed the eastern shore past East Cutler homes and the lakeside shacks, avoiding some of the enemies because this was an exploration trip and, despite possessing the Soylent Green Maker, we didn’t actually need to murder absolutely everybody.
The route continued through Poseidon Reservoir and Roadside Pines Motel before we reached Natick Banks. We rummaged around what remained of the police station and Red Rocket, then looked at the map and spotted something interesting: a small lake sitting just beyond the normal boundary.
I’d already removed Fallout 4’s invisible boundary walls in preparation for the second half of the stream. We weren’t technically at the noclip stage yet, but nothing was stopping us simply walking beyond the edge, so we headed up the hillside to investigate. As we moved further out, textures began disappearing from the world and the supposedly interesting lake on the map turned out to be a rather disappointing dried-out patch.
There were still locations inside the Commonwealth we’d missed as well. We fast-travelled back into Boston and finally visited Charles View Amphitheater, somewhere I’d remembered from my original playthrough and which we’d somehow walked past several times without properly investigating.
There we met Brother Thomas and the Pillars of the Community, who were very keen for us to join their suspiciously enthusiastic little movement. During the conversation, however, something apparently kicked off with the Brotherhood outside and explosions suddenly started going off everywhere. Virtually everybody in the settlement was wiped out while we were still talking.
For once, we genuinely didn’t do it.
Brother Thomas wanted us to meet him in his room out the back, but we weren’t going to hand over everything we owned. Instead, I broke into the locked door behind him, which he wasn’t particularly pleased about. Given that it was the final stream and we had our new favourite weapon, his objection ultimately resulted in him becoming considerably more Soylent Green than he had been a few moments earlier.
We then spoke to Emogene Cabot and convinced her to leave, apparently bringing Emogene Takes a Lover to an end. With that final bit of conventional wandering completed, we returned to Sanctuary and spent a considerably long time standing on top of the main building with our rooftop Brahmin. We made a proper save there, because the next stage was where Fallout 4 stopped being a normal playthrough entirely.
God mode: on. Noclip: on.
I set the weather to clear, moved the time to 11 o’clock in the morning and froze it there so we’d have consistent daylight. The fog was removed as well, suddenly rendering enormous stretches of the Commonwealth in the distance. We increased our movement speed and took off from Sanctuary, flying east towards the coast while the game occasionally paused to load new cells because we were travelling considerably faster than it had ever expected us to.
There was another trick prepared for the tour too: temporarily disabling Fallout 4’s water system. With the water switched off, riverbeds and submerged debris were exposed, and by combining that with third-person camera mode we could move around within the currently loaded cell and inspect things we’d normally only ever see through murky water. As soon as we moved our actual character again, the water system restarted and everything flooded back into place.
We followed the coastline south, repeatedly turning the water on and off and poking around underneath the world until we reached the Yangtze submarine in Boston Harbor. Removing the water there revealed something rather amusing: the submarine isn’t embedded in the bank or settled into the seabed. It’s basically just floating there. After hundreds of years you’d think it might have drifted into something, but apparently not. It could have ended up anywhere.
From the harbor we headed into Boston itself and began flying around the skyscrapers. This was where all hell kicked off, because enemies we’d previously killed on the rooftops had respawned, and apparently every single one of them could see us flying overhead. Suddenly the city became a firework display, with gunfire coming from rooftops in every direction while we carried on sightseeing.
Diamond City was particularly interesting from above. Outside the settlement we could see the low-poly version normally used when viewing it from distant skyscrapers, then flew inside and looked back out at the simplified version of Boston surrounding it. Familiar places looked completely different when viewed from angles the game never intended us to reach.
Unfortunately, Fallout 4 began objecting to the experiment.
Certain areas caused the game to lock up completely, requiring us to alt-tab and kill it through Task Manager. When it glitched, it also decided to spool the GPU up to 100%, and as much as I have a 5090, I don’t particularly want Fallout 4 sitting there running it at 100%. Reloading brought its own problems, including an autosave made while we were airborne, so console commands had to be reapplied and movement speeds corrected before the expedition could continue.
Gary was blamed where appropriate.
Once everything stabilised, we headed west again before turning south and flying across the Glowing Sea. Without radiation being a concern and with the fog removed, the entire region opened up beneath us. Structures we’d previously fought our way towards through radioactive haze were suddenly visible across huge distances.
And somewhere in the middle of all that, we spotted Vault 95.
I couldn’t believe we’d completely forgotten to go back and explore it. After 60 streams, there was still an entire Vault sitting there waiting for us. It wasn’t the only missed location we’d discover either, which left open the possibility that Fallout 4 might eventually get another wandering-and-clearing-up stream in the future.
We continued all the way back towards the coast, crossing the wreck of the FMS Northern Star and Warwick Homestead before heading over Spectacle Island and removing the water there too. We could see various structures dotted around the area, which led into a discussion about Fallout 4’s unfinished underwater content — including material in the files apparently connected to an underwater location and a giant squid boss. I don’t currently know how to enable any of it, so that remains another possible investigation for another day.
Next came Nuka-World/Land/Place/Park/Resort/Location/whatever-it’s-called.
We flew around the outer perimeter before heading over the different parks, getting an aerial view of areas we’d spent so much time exploring from ground level. One particularly interesting discovery was the Dry Rock Gulch employee area. We’d tried getting over the wall before and never managed it because our questline simply hadn’t taken us there.
That was apparently connected to one of our earlier decisions. Rather than siding with the gangs and following their questline further, we’d chosen the considerably happier option for the Commonwealth of eradicating all of them. Flying above the park finally allowed us to see an area that choice had effectively kept out of reach.
After touring the parks we realised we’d forgotten to investigate the dam in the extreme north, so back through several loading cells we went. We followed the river further and further beyond the intended area until, eventually, Bethesda ran out of world and it simply dissipated into low-poly nothing.
Far Harbor was our final destination, and removing its fog completely transformed the island. One of the first things you can see from outside the intended play area is that the thick white fog around Far Harbor itself is partly created by a curved environmental panel. With noclip active, we could literally fly around it and see the shape producing the illusion.
From there we moved beyond the invisible barriers and explored some of the outer islands. There were little buildings scattered around out there, although most appeared to be derivative copy-and-paste structures from elsewhere in the world. We travelled around the northern part of the island before moving south towards Acadia, seeing the whole area from above.
Cliff’s Edge Hotel was particularly striking without the fog. Looking all the way down the side of the cliff made the scale of the landscape much more obvious than it had ever seemed during normal gameplay. We also checked beneath the water around the fishing areas, although presumably the local fishermen had already trawled up anything interesting.
Further south we found more locations we’d somehow passed without properly visiting, including the Harbor Grand Hotel. I couldn’t believe we’d walked past it and never actually gone inside. Earlier in the playthrough I’d been far more concerned about conserving ammunition, not realising that the gun sitting unused in our inventory could turn most enemies into Soylent Green in one or two shots.
We continued around Far Harbor’s southern coastline and up the western side, heading beyond the normal barriers to investigate the distant islands and their lighthouses. Everyone knows I love lighthouses.
Eventually we moved back north towards the Nucleus and had a look through its walls. Unfortunately, even with all our newfound disregard for how the game was supposed to work, we couldn’t see the submarine through them. Disappointing.
One final flight brought us back up towards Acadia, and that was where the Fallout 4 playthrough finally came to an end.
Chat had been along for the entire strange evening, naturally providing its own parallel adventure. A Hunger Games event ended with me victorious and immediately produced accusations of #rigged. There were successful heists, Pokémon hunts and conversations wandering through spicy cheese, cheese-and-bacon sandwiches, pasta, banana bread, parcel deliveries and the eternal struggle of trying to reach an actual human through automated customer service. Meanwhile, the Soylent Green Maker kept making the recurring “everyone is dead, Dave” joke increasingly appropriate.
Responsibility for the evening’s various disasters was also distributed fairly and objectively between Gary, Mr Smith, Granny and Frodo. Personal responsibility apparently didn’t survive the nuclear apocalypse.
We were joined during the finale by raids from kingironblood and fahr_avayana, bringing more people into the Commonwealth just in time to watch us remove the water, fly through walls and generally abuse Bethesda’s game engine. At the end of the night, we sent our own raid onwards to AngryJoeShow.
And with that, a journey that was originally supposed to run from New Year to New Year was finally complete. Illness and other interruptions had stretched the playthrough eight months further into 2026, ultimately giving us 60 streams and 121 hours, 4 minutes and 16 seconds of Fallout 4. Across seven and a half years of streaming, that makes it our sixth most-played game, sitting just behind Skyrim at 128 hours across 49 streams.
There are still places we could return to. Vault 95 is sitting there accusingly, along with hotels, settlements and other locations our journey simply never took us through. So the master save isn’t necessarily being sealed away forever.
For now, though, the Commonwealth has been explored, looted, irradiated, flown over, drained of water and pushed considerably further than it was ever meant to go.
📺 Watch the Episode
Want to see what Fallout 4 looks like when the invisible walls stop being suggestions? Watch the full finale here:
Watch Fallout 4 Episode 60 on YouTube
You can follow the entire wasteland journey through the Fallout 4 playlist, and if you’ve enjoyed the adventure, head over to Dr Ravenholm on YouTube, leave a like or comment and subscribe for whatever we manage to break next.
🔴 Join the Adventure Live
The Fallout 4 expedition may be over for now, but Saturday Bethesda Nights aren’t going anywhere. After a Star Trek LEGO intermission next weekend, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered begins in two weeks, with Starfield waiting further down the road.
Come aboard live on Twitch or join us through YouTube. You never quite know when a normal evening will turn into disappearing oceans, rooftop Brahmin or a game requiring emergency termination through Task Manager.
🌐 Community & Links
The Commonwealth expedition was never a solo operation. If you’ve been part of the crew — or you’ve only just discovered us — there are plenty more places to continue the adventure.
Stay with the live crew: catch future expeditions on Twitch and YouTube.
Join the community: between streams, the conversation continues over on Discord.
Follow the signal: find me on TikTok, Bluesky, Instagram, Facebook, Threads and X.
Follow the music: my debut EP Two Post-its is out now, with the music available through Spotify and Apple Music.
Support the expedition: channel merchandise and support can be found through the Dr Ravenholm shop, Teespring and Streamlabs.
Beyond the wasteland: explore the Transparent Aluminium Business Centre, download the service brochure, learn more about me or venture into the blog.
🌅 Until the Next Adventure
Sixty streams. 121 hours, 4 minutes and 16 seconds. A year and a half of Saturday nights spent looting, fighting, exploring, getting distracted and occasionally discovering that the absurdly powerful gun we needed had been sitting in our inventory all along.
Thank you to everyone who joined me in the Commonwealth.
For now, Fallout 4 can rest.
We’ve explored it, looted it, drained its oceans, flown beyond its borders and broken it in ways Todd Howard never intended.
Have a good night, and I’ll see you next time.
— Dr Ravenholm
Discover more from Transparent-Aluminium.net
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
