What the heck is "Al Bhed"? (gaming question).

[Old Master 3.0]

I've been out of the gaming loop for quite some time now, so I hope some of you gamers here can set me straight.

I've been noting a lot of discussion, and a bit of a "craze", all across the web and among some offline peeps concerning something called "Al Bhed". Just what IS that, anyway? What exactly does it entail? All I know is that it involves the "Final Fantasy" games in some way.

 

[Mr. Pointy]

Looks like it's an invented language used in the game OM
Look here
Klingon for FF gamer nerds?😛

 

[MentPatient]

It's like a different race of people in the FFX game. They have their own language and all, but people don't like them because they try to use machina (machines) to kill Sin (the big bad).

Hehe, I play FFX all the time. It's fun! I maxed out all my guys in the Sphere Grid and got all their ultimate weapons. I even customized their armor so they can have over 10k life.

 

[elmo]

And Machina are the reason that the world they live in is haunted by Sin. Rikku is an Al Bhed. This is Rikku.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v53/elmo_kill_barney/rikku.jpg

Before Sin - the world they lived in was full of machina. They were almost wiped out by sin because they used Machina too much. I love Final Fantasy.

 

[Jill_Valentine]

The Al Bhed have an unfair bad rep though. Sin (Massive unkillable monster) has more to it than simply natural wrath. The Al Bhed are distinctive from the other Final Fantasy races because of their language (Which is a letter substitution code but with really inventive pronunciation for each syllable) and also because the pupils of their eyes are spirals, rather than discs. (But since they come from the desert they usually wear goggles. )

They're also probably the most overt political statement in the Final Fantasy series.