#Hopes!Claude and 3H!Claude are literally two entirely different characters. straight up

[fayesdiary]

Congrats on beating 3H !! So what are your thoughts of the complete Fodlan experience ?

Jokes aside, honestly I'm not sure I can give a straight answer.

Overall I'd say it's been one of if not my least favourite Fire Emblem, but that really doesn't sum it up.

A more accurate description would be that it had a good chunk of things I loved (above all the Nabatean fam, Dimitri and his story and Claude as a character)... But it's buried beneath a mountain of boredom to slog through, decisions I just don't vibe with and The Bullshit™. Sooo much tedium and Bullshit in this game, and the fact I was kinda done halfway through VW and only persevered through the end out of sheer spite doesn't help.

And it's such a shame because when I liked the game I REALLY liked it and think it has some of the best/most interesting ideas of the entire series... But was it really worth slogging through hundreds of hours playing the same mediocre at best maps and story beats over and over and having to constantly bear that. Fucking. Monastery? Right now I'm inclined to say no. As much as I love those things, it was not.

Playing all the routes one after another really lays some of the biggest issues of this game, like the repetition. SOOO much of this game is recycled between routes and also in a single route to honestly insulting levels, and it doesn't get that much better in Part 2. The fact the devs somehow didn't think people would want to play more than one route is just. Baffling.

Something I realized in the final playthrough is that they also recycle maps for what are supposed to be completely different locations. So you get shit like Brigid somehow looking the exact same as a forest in the Alliance filled with Demonic Beasts, or Rhodos Coast and a beach in the Sreng Peninsula perfect copies of each other. Complete with the monuments for Cichol and Cethleann. Also like damn, Seteth's wife was so dead they had to bury her twice. In two different locations.

The writing is all over the place as a result of the chaotic development where not even the devs could agree on what the story was, and the whole game could be used as a test study on the sheer damage scope creep can do as well as the obsession with lore and worldbuilding that they contradict as soon as it's convenient over making an actually coherent narrative. And also why you don't throw literally any idea you can come up with to the wall hoping something sticks.

Because of the overreliance on telling over showing, what with the bland recycled maps and all, that Garreg Mach almost feels like the only real location in Fódlan, and that's something no amount of in-game libraries or novels worth of lore if those ten thousand years of lore are even real and didn't just make it up

Speaking of Garreg Mach, dear Sothis I hate that place now.

The monastery was fun the first time around, but then it became a chore to something I actively dreaded doing. It's monotone, you do the same shit every time, it lasts FOREVER compared to, you know, the ACTUAL Fire Emblem gameplay I'm playing for. And while you can technically skip it, you're losing on so much stuff to progress your units if you use it, so it feels like the option is just there to mock you. Getting into Persona and realizing how well the calendar system can work if done properly did nothing but sour me even more on the monastery.

The characters having new dialogue every chapter is really neat and something I wish got properly carried over to Engage, this game manages to turn even that into a chore.

And like - I really want to like this game, and in a sense I do, there's quite a bit of it I love. But so much of it makes me actively groan that I don't think I'm gonna replay it for at least a year. And if I do it will be with the No Monastery mod.

[dmclemblems]

It's so annoying that SO many people are saying "Claude fans complaining about his Hopes writing just had a warped fanon version of him in their head" when, like. They're the ones actively saying stuff about his character that legitimately never happened.

"Claude was always power-hungry, curiosity and peace came after that" -> Claude LITERALLY comes to Fodlan because he was curious about it. He wanted to see for himself how Fodlan was so he could form his own opinion on it after everyone around him kept saying it was a land of cowards. Curiosity ALWAYS came first regarding Claude's character, it's the entire reason he does pretty much anything.

"Claude lied about running away from Almyra, his parents knew he left" -> His parents knowing about his running away is what he himself literally says happened, as early as Chapter 3 of 3H. Also "running away from the country that's been shitting on you" and "having your parents about you're about to run away" aren't mutually exclusive things, like, at all.

"Claude was always opportunistic" -> He always takes an extremely solid stance against Edel.gard, in every single route in the game. He'll straight up leave the entire continent over siding with her. There's clearly a limit to his opportunistic tendencies that Hopes ignores completely.

"Claude always hated Rhea and wanted her dead" -> Claude thought about a world without Rhea in it but literally never tries to kill her, and never sides with the ONE person the in entire game trying to kill her. His side - whether through his own efforts or that of Judith's - is always the side that finds out the Empire took Rhea, and his own route ends with him having amicable terms with her.

And then there's the stuff that even his fans don't have an explanation for why he did them that could align with his 3H counterpart.

Invoking a war that happened 300 years ago as justification for invading the Kingdom, when the Kingdom is currently doing absolutely nothing to them? That thing that runs diametrically opposed to pretty much everything Claude as a character stands for? No explanation, or even much acknowledgement that it happened.

His complete LACK of curiosity, a foundational part of his character? No explanation, other than the non-explanation of "well it wasn't THAT important!"

Enflaming a border war between Faerghus and Sreng, despite all of his trauma resulting from the aftereffects of what happens when two bordering countries hate each other? No explanation, and is just called "interesting" with no basis as to WHY it's interesting other than "it's different."

But god forbid you point any of this out, else you'll get hit with one of

"You never understood Claude's character"

"You only liked a fanon version of Claude"

"Well he didn't have Byleth and Garreg Mach"

"Don't be so negative"

"So you're accusing the people who like Claude in Hopes as being fake Claude fans?"

With that last one being especially telling because of just how defensive it is - never said that, weird of them to think that. Almost like yeah, trying to say you like a character after that character had every core aspect of who they were stripped away and replaced with something that was nothing like who they were before... makes it sound like you never ACTUALLY liked that character. Makes it sound like you only liked them superficially.

Which I know isn't the case with ALL Hopes!Claude fans, but yeah, it's damn sure a good bit of them. They never liked Claude and how nice he was, they liked his draft version and are happy they got something like it, and now they're complaining when told that.

Sorry for the long rant and the negativity it has, but man does hearing people say this when at this point it's clearly projection.

Yeah, Claude has always been super nosy and wants to learn everything he can about anything that he takes interest in. He's even admitted he does it to a fault and sometimes feels bad about it afterward when he realizes how far he prods (i.e. to the point of potentially making others uncomfortable). One of the reasons I was disappointed with his characterization in Hopes was the lack of his curiosity and interest in things happening in Fodlan.

On that note too, it's part of why attacking the Kingdom "worked" - because he didn't have any curiosity, thus no desire to learn about them. If he took the time to ask even a few questions, he could've solved a whole lot of misconceptions in just a few minutes. If he was interested in learning about Fodlan in Hopes, he would have wanted more information about the Kingdom before attacking. He wouldn't have just made assumptions about them/why they were helping Rhea/etc - not even White Clouds Claude would have been that one dimensional about it (that being, he hadn't been through his full year yet so he wouldn't have the same level of knowledge then either).

Claude running away from Almyra was probably both due to wanting to see Fodlan for himself and to get away from all the danger. Even for someone like him, there's only so much of that shit you can take before enough is enough. I don't mind whether his parents knew or not, though I find it odd for Nader to have said Claude was "the favorite child". In Houses Claude just kind of seemed to see his parents as a "that's the way it goes" kind of thing with their "tough love", but if Claude was "the favorite child", I'm not sure why he was constantly in so much danger. You'd think the king himself would have put a stop to it and threatened to do something to Claude's attackers, like, I don't know, threaten to execute anyone who dared to attempt to assassinate a literal prince. Regarding the other siblings, if they were so far gone that they were attempting to kill their own half sibling regardless of what their parent(s) said, I can't imagine his father was really all that close to Claude? If Claude was in as much danger as he implies in Houses, then it doesn't sound like daddy dearest did much to make sure he was always safe. It feels like he did some things, but just... not enough? I mean if my kid was in danger like that I'd be doing a lot more to make sure they weren't going to be killed. His dad loved him oh so much, yet he still ran away. He didn't just go to Fodlan - he didn't plan to go live with his grandfather for a while and send letters in his absence with everything being hunky dory. He ran away.

The opportunistic takes from some people are one my biggest NOPEs. Claude is an opportunist, but not to the point of siding with an enemy he was, canonically stated as (thank you Rodrigue dearest xoxo hugs kisses smoochies you always have the tea for all occasions) firmly against the Empire. In no route in Houses does he ever side with Edelgard. He says he doesn't want to kill her, but he'll do it if she won't stop fighting. Also, he explicitly said right to her face that because of her his long held ambitions were nearly ruined. That's not... something you say to someone you wanna side with in a war. A lot of people, including the writers, seem to believe that you have to pick a side: either Rhea or Edelgard. There's literally no "neither" option in either game. In Houses though, Dimitri and Claude both side with Rhea, or to be more exact, the Church under Seteth's command (i.e. not explicitly Rhea, but they were allying together as two losing sides). In Hopes, instead of letting Claude not pick a side since he didn't like Rhea, they just... forced him to side with Edelgard because ???

Also, I think it's important to consider that in Houses, Claude always sides with whoever is opposing Edelgard. In VW, he allies with Seteth and the Church and wants to side with the Kingdom, but because Dimitri dies in VW that didn't happen. In AM and VW both, Claude wanted to ally with the Kingdom before Gronder happened, which is clear when he says the Kingdom doesn't look like they're interested in joining forces. He went into that battle hoping they would want to (and he probably planned for it in AM seeing as he had previously sent an agreement to do so, thanks Rodrigue for the tea AGAIN bc you can't rely on anyone around here except Tea Spiller for vital information and happenings!!!). In other words, under no circumstances did he accept what the Empire was doing... and he could've surrendered to the Empire at any time in any route, but in CF he only does so once he's defeated and has his life spared, meaning he literally fought to his almost death and only didn't die because you/Byleth decided to spare him. In the event you don't spare him, he fights against the Empire even if it kills him. He is literally willing to die fighting them.

Claude doesn't like Rhea in VW and that's the extent of it by the end of the game, tops. At one point or two he thought about what if she did die, sure, but that doesn't equate to him wanting to personally kill her. His thinking is more along the lines of “well it’d be a shame if she died /s” and not “we should go kill her”. He located her whereabouts because he understood by then (whether it’s VW or AM) that regardless of his personal feelings about her, most of Fodlan either needed her or cared about her.

Attacking the Kingdom is bad enough, but seeing him justify it with “well they started it 300 years ago lolz” was such bullshit to me. Like, no, legit, if anyone told me we were going to war because whoever was in power 300 years ago sucked and “they started it”, I’d tell them they’re fucking stupid and should not be someone holding a weapon. That was the most brain dead thing Claude has ever said between both games. Not only was it completely against his character, but it was literally the most bogus reason to go to war with anyone ever. “Hey, you know those guys from 300 years ago who are so long dead that they didn’t even know in their lifetime that we’d exist one day? Yeah? Those people who are literally ancient history and have no say in our lives? We’re gonna go to war because long dead people from Leicester didn’t like some long dead people from the Kingdom and, you know, I really think the citizens of the Kingdom who are living now in the present should pay for that. We should go invade their home because we have to hold them accountable for what was out of their not-born-yet control from 300 years ago!””

I really cannot believe Claude pulled the “well they did it first!” card as if someone they knew personally or someone with a high position in the Kingdom living right then drew first blood. There would not be a single person alive in the Kingdom who had anything to do with any of that from back then, and here Claude is justifying his war with... that. It’s literally stupid to begin with, but to put those words in Claude’s mouth of all people is an insult to his entire existence, honestly. The whole Faerghus and Sreng thing was definitely a big side eye for me considering he’s from Almyra.

The Byleth excuse is just dumb to me because Claude doesn’t need Byleth. He’s the same person in every route of Houses. It’s also noteworthy that Claude gave Failnaught specifically to Dimitri, not Byleth. All the other characters give their relics to Byleth to “hold onto” (game mechanics and shit), but Claude doesn’t give Byleth Failnaught thinking it’s Byleth who is going to end the war, and it’s not Byleth he called on for help when the Alliance needed the Kingdom. In CF if he survives he just says hi and bye to Byleth and leaves, with no “wow I sure hope we can bring our nations closer together after the war”. He didn’t ask for Byleth’s help in CF. It never had anything to do with Byleth specifically that he was who he was. In fact, if nothing else he really only saw Byleth as a means to an end for a while and even wanted to use the Sword of the Creator. Byleth was a tool for him for at least half of WC, and he even sometimes in VW doesn’t really think about Byleth’s feelings? Fuck ‘em, he wants to read Jeralt’s diary. Byleth is worried about Rhea so they should hurry and find her? Fuck that, he just wants answers from Rhea. They became friends, yes, but his entire existence does not revolve around Byleth and I see so many Claude fans hellbent on insisting things that basically equate to “he’s only a good person because of Byleth”. No, he has an entire character outside of Byleth and I’d appreciate it if people stopped reducing him to eye candy for their self insert version of Byleth. :)

It’s fine, I know a lot of people are upset about what Hopes did but also the way some players are reacting to it. I don’t mind if people like this version of him, but I hate how some players are treating Houses Claude fans. It’s ironic too because some of these people are the ones who at first were saying Hopes is just an AU, but now they’re insisting this was always Claude’s character. 

[butwhatifidothis]

I can't even begin to wrap my mind around the fact that they intentionally made Claude OOC. Like why, under any circumstance, would any developer or writer want to do that to their game? How would that in any way shape or form benefit the game to do that? Can they not hear themselves? Even fanfiction writers get flack for writing characters OOC but then you turn to THE SOURCE and they come out and say that they intentionally wrote a character wrong for the lolz?

The full context of that can be found here (near the end), but to sum it up: they basically did it to showcase what the characters would be like without Byleth/Garreg Mach. In essence, it’s them saying that “they only look out of character, but that’s just because it’s a different environment! they’re totally the same!” To quote them:

"In this game, because of the Officer’s Academy was suspended soon, the students have been taken away the time to bond with allies and the opportunity to understand each other across different houses. That fact had impact on how a lot of the students form their personalities, and thus changed the content of support conversations. If you feel “Huh? I don’t remember this character having this kind of personality…” at some point, that’s exactly the difference caused by the situation of this game."

Which... kind of speaks to their mindset regarding the characters of 3H, and I don't mean to say that in a good way. They basically see some characters COUGHCLAUDECOUGH as having such weak and malleable foundations and personalities that they would completely and utterly change the second the devs' favorite child/monastery is taken out of the picture. They even say it themselves - they MEANT to change the characters' characters, because in their mind (at least, if we take this as being their genuine intention) these characters would genuinely be nothing like they are in 3H were it not for specifically and only Byleth/Garreg Mach.

So, for example: Claude. His curiosity which brought him over to Fodlan in the first place? Byleth and Garreg Mach. His want to know the truth about his surroundings and to broaden his perspective regarding the world around him, which were also partly why he came to Fodlan? Byleth and Garreg Mach. His unwillingness to work with Edelgard, even when Byleth sides with her on CF and thus tacitly approves of her actions and even with Claude distrusting the Church and even with Claude supposedly being an amoral opportunist who sides with whoever looks like the winner? Byleth and Garreg Mach. Hopes and its creators say that without Byleth and Garreg Mach Claude would have never had the traits that he is shown to have before he ever met Byleth or set foot in Garreg Mach. Or are otherwise completely unaffected by Byleth or Garreg Mach. 

To say nothing of the fact that that quote I took from the interview is directly contradicted by... Hopes. By the characters constantly whinin' and cryin' and shiddin' and snottin' about having to fight their classmates - so much for them not bonding with those from different houses, because they literally never act like it. Hell, the one time I can think of where that ever happens is during a specific interaction in SB, on its bad end where Claude betrays the Empire. If you have Ignatz fight Claude, he’ll go on about their time as “fellow Golden Deer” and asks Claude why he’s doing this, to which Claude kinda reasonably responds “Were Golden Deer. Now you’re just another one of Count Gloucester’s lousy knights.” Which, you know, makes sense that Claude’s response is so “cold” considering that Claude has known Ignatz in this timeline as a “fellow Golden Deer” for, like a month? Max? A time in which they literally can’t even have supports with each other even on GW, so they were literally disallowed to grow close to each other in any way during that time? But Claude is portrayed as the asshole in the situation because he did not value his time with the Golden Deer in Garreg Mach. Y’know, that thing in this game that the devs are insisting 

LITERALLY DIDN’T EXIST.

It’s such a blatant case of wanting their cake and eating it too. They wanna say that these personality changes happened because “No Byleth, no Garreg Mach,” meanwhile the characters are unrelenting in their boo-hoo’s about fighting people trying to kill them because they were around said people in Garreg Mach for A MONTH MAX. These personality changes are because they’re just so much worse without Byleth around to guide them or their experiences in Garreg Mach, meanwhile Claude is the only main character (and one of the few characters period) to have his character have such a drastic change be as negative as it is - Dimitri and Edelgard are inarguably better off without Byleth, as Dimitri has a support system that’s actually allowed to interact with him in a meaningful way and Edelgard is described by the devs of Hopes to be happy in this game with everything going well for her (essentially, “We didn’t wanna step on 3H’s toes, also fuck CF in its entirety lol SB is way better for Edelgard”). But “No Byleth/Garreg Mach” is supposed to be a bad thing, but only for specifically Claude evidently, despite him being the most independent from Byleth character wise of the three lords. 

And. Like. A bit of a tangent but. You don’t really want your audience to feel that a character’s personality has ever changed, per se. You more want them to feel as though it’s gone through development in some way, not that it’s outright different unless something extreme happened to them. Like, extreme extreme. Take Dimitri, in 3H: he goes from polite if snarky and dry-humored to becoming far more prone to violence and being very distant from others between pre-timeskip and post-timeskip. But 1) that’s something that’s directly a result of his experiences throughout the story, and can be seen as something that is building up to what it becomes as one goes through the story - it’s not just springed on the player out of nowhere, it makes sense as to why Dimitri is acting differently from Point A to Point B. And 2) in both moments in his character arc, he never hurts innocents, he still recognizes people like Dedue as being deeply important to him, he rarely genuinely forces people to do what he wants more than he does nothing to stop others from following his reckless and dangerous tendencies, he’s actually still compassionate to some degree (noted here to still retain some empathy) - these core things stay the same, even if the character is acting radically different. And because of that, you can understand how he can recover, because he never lost those core traits that made him good. 

Very different from Claude in Hopes, who loses many of the things that make him redeemable despite his faults - his avoiding violence unless necessary, his curiosity, his drive for the truth, a lot of his compassion, his intellect, etc. - in favor of Something Different (aka him acting like Edelgard). Some of those traits (namely his curiosity and drive for the truth) are just never to be seen at any point in Hopes, and other traits (namely his intellect) are discarded whenever the plot needs them to be gone more than there’s a genuine attempt to develop them out of him. Claude really encompasses that difference between “this character developed into being different because of the events of the story and how they affect them” and “this character was changed into being different because them needed to Be Different Than Before.” And because he doesn’t retain those good traits that made him redeemable, his actions come across as far more damning - he has nothing within his character that could reasonably lift him from the rock bottom his actions sink him to, unlike 3H!Dimitri. It’s sad when Dimitri is unable to recover in non-AM routes, because we know that he still has it in him to become better; it’s annoying and off-putting when Clyde is able to walk off what he does in GW/SB (the latter only potentially, to be clear), because there’s nothing that shows he can better himself from what he’s done. 

And, like. You can tell that these writers kind of had no idea what the hell they were doing when making Hopes? Because they say that things are “unsatisfactory” so that 3H wouldn’t be stepped on, meanwhile they do shit like what I mentioned earlier with Edelgard where she’s literally happier in SB than she ever was on CF (with her happiness being something the devs literally said they intended to do). Claude’s tale is supposed to be heartwarming, as his character is torn to shreds and he does things that completely go against everything he’s ever stood for. The war’s not supposed to ever be concluded in Hopes, meanwhile Dimitri literally does end the war on AG’s good end (even with how much Hopes tries to gaslight the player into believing otherwise - sorry game, there’s literally no one else to fight so yes the war is in fact over). Like fuckin’ hell if you told me that each sentence in this game was written by a different person I wouldn’t immediately disbelieve you with how completely nonsensical the story is to the supposed intention of the devs, it’s just so fuckin’ bad