I've heard from people that what Square did to Grin was really bad. i think that fair enough that they wanted to cancel the contract - but at least compensate them for the work they've done. so i'm not sure what happened, but it was really wrong what SE did. Grin might not have been a top studio but at least they seemed to be doing there best.
and the artwork seemed consistant with FF12 and other FF games imo, the environment locations seemed similar so i'm not sure what the complains were about.
from what i've read it seems plausable that Sqaure didnt want to spend capital on the project because of their financial concerns at the time - i think FF13's development costs were building up at that point from the move to PS3 from PS2.
so they already decided before communicating with Grin to terminate the contract. its a shame because Grin seemed to think they could do something revolutionary with the foundation they were given. and a poor quality spin off wouldnt have hurt the reputation of the main series - well not anymore than Dirge of Cerberus, X-2 have.
