Even before the pricing plans came out:
we wanted to combine third-person play with first-person play
I think this was what set off a lot of alarm bells. I remember, when this was announced, making a post here along the lines of "can anyone name a single game that did this well? Most games have one mode pretty well with the other tacked on. The others have neither mode particularly good at all. No game has done both successfully and it's unlikely to ever happen."
I stand by that.
Then, at the second or third E3, almost every video was in third person and they all looked like a Playstation 1 game as far as gameplay went (so did Heavenly Sword.)