Gears of War 3 author avoids playing games

Karen Traviss prefers to come to her projects cold.

Karen Traviss, the author behind Gears of War 3's tie-in novels, has explained that she avoids playing games – because she likes to come to her projects with a clean slate.

"I have an obsessive personality and it's taken all my strength not to buy the FIFA game," said Traviss, speaking to 1up [warning, that link contains spoilers for the Gears franchise].

"The thing about Gears, and the thing about anything I work on, is that I must come to it cold. The less I know about something, the better."

Traviss added that much of her inspiration is drawn from the look of Epic's iconic series.

"For me, so much of the back story lies only in the visuals. The art. Images are the most important thing I can extrapolate from. The best way I can describe it is like an aerial recon image. These guys that process the image that come back from recon satellites and aircraft? They go through it with a fine-tooth comb, they work out what those things on the ground are.

"That's what I'm like when I see an image from a game. The imagery of Gears is such that when you look into the environments, I want to walk into that world and down those paths."