If anything, Hope is more than a bit awkward around people. He’s a teenage boy who grew up in the background and never really had a direction for himself even though everyone else seemed to know who and what they wanted to be when they grew up. He was a child content with what he had and without the ambition to be better in any way, despite the fact that he had so much potential. He's a good child— doesn’t cuss, doesn’t cause trouble, doesn’t go out of his way to make a fuss, doesn’t hang out with the bad crowd, and does his work quietly and efficiently. Hope’s world as a kid revolved around his mother, whom he doted on and clung to with the fervor of a child who had a hard time making friends and had a hard time fitting in. He had two friends in elementary school, both of whom moved away and lost contact with him during middle school. He was an extremely sheltered child; an only child with a government worker as a father and a full time mom. What has to be understood is that Cocoon is an extremely sheltered world, and Hope was sheltered even in Cocoon standards. He's never so much as stepped in mud before he was eight years old (and that was only because of a school field trip that took the kids out of their comfort zones. The kids thought dirt and plants smelled funny because they had never encountered so much of it before, coming from the city). He was the type who preferred playing inside rather than outside; preferred staying with his mother and washing vegetables for her despite not understanding why she was so fascinated with grown food when the food created by the fal’Cie provided the sufficient nutrition. He was the child who once adored his father, but then grew up biting down on venomous comments regarding how his dad was never there so that he wouldn’t upset his mother, and then worked hard to distract her from her loneliness. (It didn't always work, since his sullen silence around his father worried her a lot as well.)

Hope is a bit shy and extremely polite (better illustrated in the Japanese version as he speaks keigo (the formal and polite manner) to everyone with the exception of one character) with a very blunt manner of speaking: he uses simple words and is able to twist them enough to get his point across in a rather eloquent manner when he’s serious, contrasted with stammers and general ducked head and slouching when he’s uncertain (which is a lot). Hope tends to take promises very seriously because of certain events in his childhood, and be very childish in his physical mannerisms: he reaches out and grabs onto someone’s hand or shirt if he wants their attention, and swings his arms rocking on his feet when he’s waiting for something to happen. He wrings his hands when he's nervous and covers his face when he laughs or cries. Most of those are generally physical quirks that would be seen in children much younger than he is, but then, Hope’s lack of friends and other teenage influences in his life, along with his dependence on his mother, would explain the lack of development there.

This gives a better understanding on just how lost he became after his mom's death— after being suddenly rounded up at gunpoint by soldiers while they were on vacation and herded on a train that would take them to “Hell”. That day was the first day Hope had ever been in any real danger, and spun his life around from being the same content child who was just waiting for his problems to pass without any insight to his future, to watching a massacre conducted by the very government that was supposed to protect him; and being stripped of his mother, home, past, future, freedom, and humanity when he was turned into a l’Cie: a monster straight from nightmares and horror stories. He lost everything that he had relied on in one day, and wasn't ready for that loss, not like the other characters of the game who had all known what they were getting into.

The events of the game is a giant ride of character development for Hope. He had to learn, and learn quick, in order to survive. The thing is, though: Hope is resourceful. He is quick-witted and sharp and so very brilliant that sometimes his deductions seem rather disconnected from the game because he manages to make connections from A to Z while skipping the rest of the alphabet. He’s logical and eventually becomes the team strategist, revealing the very beginning of what is an exceptional mind (which is taken much, much further in the second game) of a teenager who could potentially become... anything he wanted to be. He’s good with machines, good with deducing situations as well as people, charismatic when he’s self confident enough, and powerful. He’s got fantastic aim and learns very, very quickly.

But along with all of that... Hope isn’t self-confident. He may have all that potential and all that power, but he’s hesitant and uncertain in his own thoughts, never sure if he’s good enough to do something. Despite all his potential, Hope is still limited by his age and his inexperience as well as his mental and emotional trauma from the events of the game that needs time to heal. Hope’s the type who clings to people because despite his maturity and his understandings, he still has a child’s mentality and instinct to trust and depend. He tends to duck his head when he talks (a habit he never grows out of), and turn statements into questions if he’s in the slightest bit unsure of things. His mood is usually dependent on the mood of people around him as he’s very easily influenced— he draws his confidence from those around him and their approval.

Hope isn't your typical video game hero who has something tragic happen to them and suddenly they're willing to fight for what's right... he behaves much more like a normal, albeit broken, kid: he whines, he sulks, he grieves, he throws tantrums, and he struggles to learn and grow up. He can be a real brat. He can hold terrible grudges and feel like wanting to kill someone. He's very much a pushover, even. But at the core of it all, Hope is a very kind teen who doesn't like causing trouble or even drawing attention to himself. He oscillates between wanting to stay a child and not believing that he's good enough at... anything, really, since he compares himself to his (exceptional and experienced) teammates, and wanting so hard to be seen as grown up and believe that he really can take a stand and make a difference even when it looked like all was lost. He misses the security he once had, but is determined that he’s an adult now because he refuses to be left behind in the way children are left behind when people go off to fight.

For Hope, the duration of the game was a real eye-opener. Within the week (canon says the events of the game took a week. I propose closer to a month with the amount of things that happened), he's had his entire life re-written. He's not just some helpless child without a sense of direction anymore. All of a sudden, he's got real power and the realization that those in charge can be wrong. They can be the bad guys. He's had it revealed that the core of everything he had been told as a child (and that the rest of his world had been told) was a complete lie, and that the dangerous and feared monsters the government protected them from... was actually just what the government turned ordinary people into. He's been shot at, clawed, fallen from dangerous heights, poisoned, and so much more in that week. He's learned how to kill to survive.

But what makes him special, and a hero, is how he retained his heart and his belief in people. Hope honestly believes that people are good despite being chased out of his own home city by a mob who had probably watched him grow up, and the government announcing that they wanted to publicly execute him, and everything that happened to him. Despite the tragedies he's had to face (or perhaps because of), he's starting to learn to trust in himself, and starting to understand that people can be manipulated easily. That it's easy to believe in lies because people generally want the easier path. That he's not going to do that anymore, because he wants to judge things for himself rather than be told what to believe in. He may be naive and believe in others too much, but he has exceptionally clear insight in that no matter what he does, no matter what seems to blindsight him, he does understand his own motivations and what he needs to do in order to continue. Hope can lie to himself, but he'll always know that it's a lie.

In the beginning of the game, he actively scrambled away from things he was scared of— he clung to Vanille and hid behind Sazh when soldiers came. Along the way, though, he slowly learned and actually managed to convinced Lightning to teach him how to survive. By chapter seven, he was brave enough to confront Snow about his mother’s death. By chapter eleven, he choked back his own fears and asked his team to leave him behind if he slowed them down. By the end, he stood to defend Vanille despite barely being able to stand at all. Hope grew up in that aspect. He’s not the type to run from danger, not anymore, not when there’s a chance that he can protect someone else. He's not scared of monsters anymore, because he's had to face all the monsters his world (and the world he thought was Hell) could throw at him and because he knows that he has a worse monster inside himself. What he's scared of now is being left alone, but more than that is the fear that eventually he would be the demise of everyone he cares about.

And while he may be very mature mentally, he's still missing real life experiences. Some things need practice, after all, and Hope's only had a week of his new-found mentality.