system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How did Bungie spend $500M on Destiny when it literally just uses the same 4 maps for every mission and has no story?

I'm not counting the Tower and the Reef as a map because the Tower is very small and the Reef was just used for one of the very few cut scenes in the game.

I'm actually seriously curious about this... I mean... the game takes like MAYBE 10 hours to beat if you don't count the grinding fest at the end of the story.
gpt
That $500M number came from Activision/Blizzard.  Bungie denied that is an accurate number.  

Development time is the largest money sink.  You're paying a staff for over 2 years to create the game (on a custom engine).