I remember reading that you can get all perks if you played long enough and levelled up to the 200s. How is that possible? How would you get the SPECIAL attributes all up to ten?

Yes, you can get all perks. You can spend perk points to increase SPECIALs. Bobbleheads possibly give points too.

So, you mean instead of buying a perk with a level up, you can increase a SPECIAL? That'd be odd, because I'd say that the SPECIAL attributes are do more than the individual perks.

At every level up you can choose to increase an Attribute or pick a perk.

Generally speaking, you will get more bank for the buck by purchasing perks than increasing SPECIAL attributes. Having said that, the first rank of a perk will have an associated SPECIAL attribute requirement. As a result, you may be required to increase a SPECIAL attribute that you have in order to be allowed to purchase a perk you want.

Yeah .. It's a pretty individual perk by perk kind of system.. Some perks go with your attributes: A guy with a strength of 1 who takes all perks in Iron Fist will still only do double damage for his 1 strength punch.. . A guy with a natural strength of 10 will punch for more damage without any perks at all.

But no matter how much perception or intelligence we have.. We apparently won't be any better at lockpicking or hacking and will be forced to take the perks to get into those harder safes and computers.

Making the decision whether to raise the stat or raise a perk will be a pretty big deal with every level for me. I'm assuming there will be much agonizing going on in the next couple of weeks.

There are more than 275 perks plus over 40 points that you'd need to spend on your special attributes to max it all, so that's over 315 levels which will take a crazy amount of time. (You could technically only spend perk points to add points to your special for your first 42 level-ups but that won't do nearly as much good as picking perks and leveling your special when necessary.

315 levels eh? Maybe on my 2nd or 3rd playthrough.