Google Maps And 'Destiny' Go To Mars

Activision’s epic first-person space shooter Destiny is just around the corner, and with it is coming a huge marketing push, including TV commercials, a song tie-in with musician Paul McCartney, and, now, a curious new partnership with Google Maps that allows players to explore planets when they aren’t playing the game.

Between Google and Activision, a new website called Destiny Planet View has launched, and enables players to explore different planets as part of a tie-in with the game. These include the moon, as well as Venus and Mars.

Put together using Google technology, the site works in a similar manner to Google Street View, allowing users to visit any of the planet’s terrain and look around in a real-time 360-degree view.

In addition, motionless scenes of characters from Destiny taking part in combat will be strewn in to the maps, giving players a chance to keep track of their friends and other first-person shooter fans while looking around. In addition, players can explore for screenshots, character art, 3D models and videos from the game, which help explain what they can expect from the experience.

Although the Destiny Planet View website does enable players to do a bit of poking around and see what the universe is like, a spokesman was quick to remind that the explorable areas are merely “a small slice” of the vast, open worlds that players can check out in the game itself.

Bungie, the developers of the Halo franchise, have been working tirelessly on the game for the past few years, and have promised a gaming world unlike which few players have ever seen.

More details on Destiny Planet View are available in the trailer below.