I definitely remember reading about it a while before release in Game Informer, and I think the game was originally going to just be an RTS. At some point they made 3rd person gameplay most of the playtime and the RTS separate. As far as I remember the RTS battles are all in the main story and theres no way to play more RTS battles if you wanted to (theyre mid anyway).

The game was also obviously incomplete, with the whole middle act being especially bare bones.