#and my friend said “proceeds to exploit like a fighting game character” in response

[haellen-o]

[fantasyinvader]

I just keep turning over in my head the idea that Hopes!Claude is meant to be how Claude was originally invisioned, the "villain you couldn't hate" as the devs put it. But there was another part of the Hopes interview that stuck out in, the fact they said they wrote Claude and the Deer out of character and that was the point. That it was intentional which makes sense since, again, Hopes!Claude is meant to be a villain rather than the good guy the character eventually came during Houses' development.

So I have to ask, what is this really saying? That while Claude wouldn't work with Edelgard but would with Dimitri when he learns Dimitri is alive and doesn't die at Gronder, Hopes!Claude would work with Edelgard and says he couldn't be friends with Dimitri (even if they work together). The former is meant to be a good guy, the latter a villain. The former is shown to be open-minded, changing his views when they are found to be wrong, while the latter is someone who shuts down Dimitri when Dimitri begins pointing out flaws in what he is doing. In his Hopes support with Hilda, Hilda says she thought Claude was someone who would leave someone else in charge and do his own thing to which the new king Claude shuts down, but that's what Claude does in Houses. Claude fighting Nemesis, someone who played role of the big bad of Houses in Engage, is the act of a hero, while Claude fighting Rhea in pursuit of his own ambitions is the act of a villain.

If anything, Hopes kinda reminds me of something from The Last Jedi. Oscar Issac played Poe in the previous film, The Force Awakens, and Poe's character was being established in supplimentary materials. Yet when he read the script for TLJ, he's reported as saying "that's not Poe" in response to how his character was portrayed. He realized how out of character it all was, but the thing is with Hopes the OoC-ness is meant to be intentional. Like fans of Claude were meant to call it out, to call bullshit on what they were seeing.

The producers thought fans would like this portrayal of Claude, but consider the director of Houses was on staff as an advisor while the three writers of Houses returned, this could have been something they slipped in without being noticed. The Hopes director didn't seem to understand Houses, saying that there was only three routes (there's four), that there's no central route (worldbuilding was done to support Silver Snow's story, which is the default for the class the game uses for it's loading screens) and that it's all a matter of POV (except the symbolism paints Flower as a route of ignornace with both it and Moon saying Edelgard is turning a blind eye from the reality of her actions, while SB has her admit she was turning a blind eye to TWSITD's manipulation of the Empire). To see the game they made treated as such, for the Deer House to be reduced to the one with so many cute girls, it may have made them act in a subversive manner.

Sunrise did a bit of this sort of thing in the early 90's against their sponsors. Toy company mandates Tomino put the titular Victory Gundam in the first episode? He airs the fourth episode first, then proceeds to try to torch the Gundam franchise. When they just wanted a simple fighting tournament show for G Gundam, it's director instead pushed for story under their noses while treating it's messages seriously. Then their Might Gaine, where they flipped off the toy company sponsoring the show when said company wanted the series to be less story-focused after the previous Brave show didn't do so well with it's final arc. Or you have Minky Momo by Ashi Productions, where they killed it's MC by being hit by a toy truck due to toy sponsors pulling out while the second series has an episode calling out the anime industry for exploiting it's workers.

We are meant to see Claude as out of character, showing that we know what Claude's character actually is. Claude wouldn't do the things he did in Hopes. He's not that cold, close-minded or dumb.