Van Buren/SPECIAL

Black Isle's canceled Fallout 3 project, codenamed Van Buren, was to feature a highly modified version of the SPECIAL character system, made by J.E. Sawyer. Some of the changes, especially to the skills system, were quite controversial among Fallout fans. Bethesda's version of SPECIAL in Fallout 3 is something of a combination of the original SPECIAL, the Van Buren SPECIAL, as well as their own changes.

Primary statistics
SPECIAL is an acronym of Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck. These were the seven basic attributes of every character in the game. They were used to determine the skills and available perks of the given character.

Derived statistics
Derived statistics were attributes of a character which were based off (or derived from) the character's primary statistics or attributes which the player could not influence directly.

The following derived statistics existed in Van Buren:

Skills
In Van Buren, there were 13 skills:
 * 3 "combat" skills: Firearms, Melee, Unarmed
 * 3 "diplomacy" skills: Barter, Deception, Persuasion
 * 4 "science" skills: Mechanics, Medic, Outdoorsman, Science
 * 3 "stealth" skills: Security, Sneak, Steal

Skills started at 0, with Tag Skills starting at 20. Point cost increases were to be steeper in order to make high skills more difficult to achieve.

Traits
The following traits were to be added or renamed:
 * Chem Resistant was renamed to Clean Living
 * One In a Million (added)
 * Red Scare (added)

Other traits were to be removed in comparison to previous games:
 * Bloody Mess
 * Heavy Handed
 * Jinxed
 * Sex Appeal

Perks
In Van Buren, perks were no longer tied to your character's level, but depended solely on your character's statistics and skills. Only high-level characters would have high skills anyway, and powerful perks being dependent on very high skills would be more of an incentive to specialize in a given skill.

The concept that tended to run through all perks was that the developers were seeking to make perks that would allow players to actually play differently. "If a player can take a perk for their character and it makes them think differently about how they are playing, that seems more interesting to me than just jacking the skill value up." In addition, he was attempting to make more perks that were directly connected to having high non-combat skills, like Healer, in order to balance and flesh out the other dimensions of gameplay.

New perks

 * Advanced Research
 * Ayyyyyy!
 * Banzai
 * Body Snatcher
 * Bulk Trader
 * Eye on the Prize
 * In Your Face!
 * Junk Merchant
 * Mental Catalogue
 * Suicide King
 * Triage