Maybe that's what the OP meant?
Sort-of. I'm not saying that ability scores are, or should be, irrelevant. I'm only providing examples of why and how they can be de-emphasised because they don't HAVE to be the central focus of a character.
I've always felt that D&D focused a little bit too much on ability scores. Or at least, maybe, I did. I found that I didn't do that as much in other systems so I've always attributed the blame to D&D itself.
That's fine. But then consider the player that is just a strong, tough fighter. He doesn't mind being stupid and saying nothing to NPCs. Should he as effective as your strong, tough, intelligent, charismatic fighter? Shouldn't he be more effective for focusing on one thing?
And that should be a viable option too.
As an example to highlight this particular aspect, consider a system where-by balance is maintained through a core table that every character uses regardless of race or class. This table has on it... I don't know... you start off with something like 5 feats and get 1 feat per level or something. Again, this isn't a system, just trying to explain part of a concept.
So a player can then choose whatever they want from a pool of balanced feats. Maybe there are feat-chains so that people can specialise and each successive feat up the chain is more powerful than the one before it. But just as effective, a person can also choose to branch out and not be boxed into a certain class stereotype, ie. the intelligent fighter or the strong wizard.
A 'strong' character could simply choose "Power Attack" as one of their feats. There's no requirement for it, you simply choose it and by doing so you're saying, "My character is pretty darn strong!" And maybe you take "Super Power Attack" which requires having "Power Attack" and that means you're really strong!
But then you also choose "Charm Her Pants Off!" because you want to be a dapper warrior who charms the ladies, and has a reputation as a womaniser (hey, I'm making this stuff up as I go here!).
In D&D I simply couldn't do that because I'm essentially forced by my class into a very specific set of ability scores. Wizards are smart but unfit, warriors are strong but dumb, etc.
Ability scores could still be relevant to the character, but not the central focus around which a character is built and then pigeon-holed into his role. I feel this would open up the floor to more variety in character creation without penalising the player for making non-optimal mechanical choices.