When I found out the other week that I'd be interviewing a super group of Final Fantasy 13 developers -- producer Yoshinori Kitase, director Motomu Toriyama, art director Isamu Kamikokuryo, and battle director Yuji Abe -- I had a small moment of panic. I mean, I haven't played a Final Fantasy game since 1997.

But you, Bitmob community, came through for me. I asked you for your burning questions, and you responded in spades. You wanted to know about Western influences. You brought up linearity, a common criticism of the game. You asked about the lengthy development process, downloadable content, and SDTV compatibility.

You asked, and now you're going to get answers. Read on to find out the group's enlightening -- and sometimes surprising -- responses.

Bitmob: Which Final Fantasy is Final Fantasy 13 most similar to? In what ways? –Jeff Parsons

Motomu Toriyama: On the surface, in the sense that they're both futuristic, fantasy-based worlds, Final Fantasy 13 might be comparable to Final Fantasy 7 and the world of Midgar. So the technology and the fantastical type of futuristic vision of Final Fantasy 7 are present in Final Fantasy 13. But Final Fantasy 13 really takes this futuristic vision to the next level in the city-world of Cocoon, which is basically a planet that's been carved out with a city within it.

B: What you think about the widespread popularity, at least here in America and Europe, of Western RPGs like World of Warcraft and Mass Effect? Has Final Fantasy 13 been influenced by any of those games? –Lance Darnell

Yoshinori Kitase: There's no direct influence from Western RPGs. But there are similarities between Final Fantasy 13 and games in the FPS genre like Modern Warfare 2, in the sense that the characters are on a battleground where they are presented with one challenge after another and different situations keep popping up, and that's how the story progresses. That sort of speed in the gameplay experience is present in Final Fantasy 13 and is something that might have been influenced by FPSes.

B: What was the thinking process behind making Final Fantasy 13 a more linear game? A lot of JRPG fans like backtracking to earlier places to grind and level up. Why change that element? –Rushan Shekar, Sam Gross

YK: There are two main reasons we went with the linear aspect that fans are commenting on. The first is, as mentioned earlier, there's a FPS-type of progression of the story, where dramatic things keep happening to the characters. If you keep going back into towns and exploring on your own, you lose sight of the story, and the speed inherent to the storyline gets lost. So in order to really put the focus on the storyline and keep players on track, we developed the game in a way that some people might feel is a little linear.

The second part is that since this a brand-new battle system for Final Fantasy 13, the team really wanted to ensure there were proper steps in place to make sure that players would fully understand the battle system. So there are tutorials implemented within the storyline, creating a really natural flow there.

Of course, the game is designed to be linear that way for the first part of the story, but once you get into the world called Pulse, it's a much more open field. There are a lot more missions there, so it's a completely different gameplay experience. Players will get there once they have a real feel for the battle system.

B: Final Fantasy 13 is a little notorious for having a long development cycle. Did you ever feel frustrated by the lengthy development process? –Juan Letona

YK: The development for Final Fantasy 13 originally started on the PlayStation 2. Once we switched to the high def machines, it was about three years from there leading up to the completion of the game. And now the overseas version is coming out with only a three-month gap. So in that sense, the team really feels that the game developed at a decent pace, that it didn't take extremely long.

But there was definitely some frustration when we first switched from the PS2 to the high def machines, because we had to rebuild the basic engine from scratch again. That took about a year and a half. During that time, the game development was a bit affected, it did slow down a bit.

Usually in the development process, programmers come up with ideas and then test them out on the engine to get feedback to see if they work or not. But none of that was possible during the year and a half we were building the basic engine. So a lot of the planning was conceptual and in the programmers' heads. That slowdown was definitely a point of frustration.

B: The next question is more a technical one. Some of our users still use standard def televisions, and they're wondering how Final Fantasy 13 will look on SDTVs. Did you have standard definition TVs in mind when creating the game? Will there be any of the text issues that plagued games like Dead Rising? –John Ostermiller

MT: [Laughter] That's the first time anyone has asked that!

YK: The Japanese version actually doesn't have anything that considers HDTV owners, because HDTV isn't really common among Japanese players. But HDTV optimization is actually a new feature upgrade for the overseas version only. Since the team is aware that there are a lot of users who are playing on HDTVs overseas, the North American and European versions are completely compatible with HDTVs. They adjusted a lot of things, including enlarging the text in the command menu. So the game is fully compatible with any of type of TV players might own.

B: Will there be any sort of crossover elements in Final Fantasy 13 -- for example, plot points -- that will be important to either Final Fantasy Versus 13 or Final Fantasy Agito 13? –Nicholas Michetti

YK: The stories and the characters and the worlds for the three titles are completely independent, so there's no crossover like [Final Fantasy 13 protagonist] Lightning appearing in Versus or anything like that. But there's this Crystal mythology that is the root for all of the games that's interpreted differently in all three of the titles. The amount of influence this mythology has on each game is completely different, but that's the one thing that really connects these three titles.

B: One final question. Can you say anything about downloadable content for the game? –Nicholas Michetti

YK: We feel that the final product is really something that can be enjoyed 100 percent on its own. So we don't have any plans for downloadable content.

Thanks to everyone who sent me questions. I'm sorry I couldn't ask them all!