Google Maps Goes to Mars (Sort Of) With Destiny Videogame Tie-Up

In July, a game delay was announced via animated GIF. In August, the creators of Fruit Ninja finally gave their blessing to a “real-life” viral video. And just two days into September, here’s another neat Internet-y marketing play: A mashup of Google Maps and a sci-fi shooter game world.

The game is Destiny, developed by Bungie and set to be published by Activision next week. As of today, a website called Destiny Planet View lets visitors explore Venus, Mars and Earth’s moon. It was “created using Google technologies,” and will feel very familiar to anyone who has used Google Street View, which lets you jump to any of the roads the tech giant has scanned and look around them in 360 degrees.

All throughout Planet View are motionless scenes of characters from the game engaging in combat — not unlike the eerily motionless streets captured by the real Street View car. But scattered across the maps are a mixture of screenshots, character art, 3-D models and explanatory videos showing off different components of the game.

A game spokesperson said the explorable areas are “a small slice” of the game’s worlds.

Because everything related to a big-budget game gets a trailer these days, here’s the trailer for Planet View:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMpGYh9FZM8

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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