GEARS OF WAR INTERVIEW: Sci-Fi Novelist Karen Traviss

New video game book series author talks games, toys and more...

In addition to this week's reviews of the Theron Guard and Delta Squad figures, we thought we'd give fans a new perspective on the Gears of War property, chatting with New York Times best-selling author Karen Traviss, who'll be bringing to life the Pendulum Wars through a series of novels set in the Gears universe prior to E-Day.

Best known for her own Wess'Har Wars series and her numerous Star Wars novels (including the new Star Wars: Order 66 out this week!), Traviss hails from Wiltshire, England where she's worked as a journalist as well as served in both the Territorial Army and the Royal Naval Auxiliary Service. Now, the best-selling author, working with Epic, has crafted the first Gears novel - Gears of War: Aspho Fields (cover art below) - scheduled to hit newsstands October 28.

You established yourself with the Wess'har Wars series, which is your own grim, adult, military sci-fi and you've also become well known for your novels set in the Star Wars universe, which is much more tame. What's it like to again be writing a hard-edged, gritty universe like Gears of War after all the PG-13 Star Wars books?

Karen Traviss (KT): It's good to be able to cuss again without having to make up an alien language to do it! The violence and grit isn't the real difference; every novel I write is about combat, after all. I have the leeway to do that pretty realistically in Star Wars. So it's all about dialogue and slightly more explicit detail. A small point, but yes, it makes a difference. I have to "hear" a different world when I switch between franchises.

I'm used to writing for specific audiences from my previous jobs, so I automatically tailor my language to the sensitivity level. I don't even have to think about it; it just happens. And restrictions actually make you a better writer, because necessity really is the mother of invention. Having said that, dialogue is one of the cornerstones of good characterization, and anyone who's spent any time in uniform or around service personnel knows that strong language is routine. And war isn't a vicar's tea party. So I admit that it's easier to "hear" the voices of characters who sound like the squaddies and sailors I'm used to in real life. But with American speech patterns, of course...

What made you want to undertake the task of telling these sure to be brutal and bloody stories?

KT: The offer to write Gears came out of the blue, like all the tie-ins I end up writing. Which is like being paid to get Christmas presents every day. It's a great job. It also loops back to an event in 2006 that I forgot until something triggered my memory...

My editor at Del Rey, Keith, asked me if I could do a fast turnaround military tie-in for him. Now, I'm not a trusting girl, and it's all too easy to say "yes" to something you end up regretting, so I needed more information. Gears of War? Hmmm. I knew nothing about Gears, which was a good start, because - for a writer like me - there's no greater killer than having a pre-existing opinion - good or bad - on a product. So I sought impartial wisdom from the oracles of gaming, my good friends Jerry and Mike at Penny Arcade. I couldn't tell them why I was asking, obviously, so I just said, "Hypothetically...tell me about Gears." Jerry's response was: "It's Traviss Town. Hypothetically..." They know me well enough to judge what fits me. So I was ninety-something percent sold. Then I called my best buddy, Jim Gilmer - writer and hardcore gamer - and just said "Gears" to him. "Karen," he said, "you know Gears has chainsaw rifles, yes?" He said it like some people would say "pistachio ice cream, with those crunchy wafers on top." He knows me too well...

It was looking too good to be true. So then I Googled for game footage, and that was when it smacked me around the head, and I knew I had to have this gig. I found a promo video from 2006. It was a TV ad - the same one that had stopped me in my tracks one evening while I was working; this guy in outrageous armor in a shattered city, not the usual generic apocalyptic game footage but a piece of pure cinema - beautiful, resonant, subtle, utterly engrossing, with real "acting." I had no idea it was Gears back in 2006. All I knew was that it knocked me for six, and at the time I had so many questions - who is that guy, what the hell is that statue about, what's happened to that city, and what's left him looking that shattered? Now I could dive in and find the answers. It was a wonderful moment. I've used the phrase lightning strike before to explain it, and that's how it felt.

I was so busting-keen to do it that I mailed Keith and said "YES" even before asking how much I was being paid. Now that's true love at first sight...

What's it like to tell the untold tales off fan-favorite video game characters Marcus Fenix, Dom Santiago, Augustus Cole, and other members of Delta Squad?

KT: The game characters are superb material to work with. Epic has managed to make them fully realized but left enough leeway for a writer to develop and explore them. Perfect. For me, characters are the absolute foundation of all fiction, and my motive in writing is to see the world through the eyes of people who aren't like me. It's the ultimate adventure - there's no more alien a landscape to explore than someone else's mind. It's not always fun, because you can end up in scary heads, unhappy heads, and plain psychopathic heads, and if you write like I do then you have to live that for the duration, but it's always a thrill.

Everything I need to know about the characters and how they relate to each other is in the cinematics of the first game. Just the detail and care in the facial expressions and body language is like an encyclopaedia. I didn't even need the story bible to work it out. Anyone who says Gears has no visible story needs to pause and take another good look at those cinematics, because it's all in there - don't use the cinematics as the break to restock with munchies. Watch them! They're rare examples of exquisite, economical storytelling that transcend even comics technique. The whole relationship between Dom and Marcus is revealed in the Raven extraction scene; I know everything about Cole and Baird from just two lines of dialogue when they're reunited.

And Dom - you know everything about Dom and how he was raised from one line he says to Marcus when they go to get the junker: "I won't let you down."

A lesser game would have had some bland and manly line that filled the space but didn't tell you much. But that line - that's a whole novel. I grabbed that right away. And a game can only do that if the folks who create it really, really know their characters.

I still go through those cinematics and find new stuff. For someone from a TV background like me, that's incredible. And that's before I get on to the sheer perfection of the graphics. Gears is beautiful. Gears is art; I don't care who laughs at me for saying that. It scores 100% as animation, as cinema, and as conventional art - as still images, as paintings. That's beyond extraordinary.

Do you have a particular character who's your favorite, who it is and why?

KT:Favorites...that's an impossible question. Favorite character - most rewarding to write, most likable, most fun, the character you'd have a beer with if they were real? I'd have a different answer every time. Baird - poor lad, someone has to like him, and I love his constant whining. I know we'd end up in a corner with a beer, griping about how dumb the whole world is, except us. Cole - he's wonderfully subtle. Yes. Trust me. Take a closer look... There are a lot of layers to Cole Train, and any soldier will recognize the key role he plays in a squad. Hoffman - what a turmoil beneath that facade. And take a look at that face; that's a face that makes the journalist in me take him aside and ask him to tell me everything that's ever happened to him, and I know it's going to be harrowing. Dom; Mister Reliable, Mister Tenacious. Who wouldn't like Dom? And Marcus - well...I've never written a character that way before. A real adventure, that one, but they're all fantastic minds for a writer to explore...