Was this a clue??

[Reynhart]

Yes, it's funny. But, since the purpose of this cutscene is showing that the empire does not ostracize people from conquered lands, it makes sense to use those two locations.

On a sidenote, in french, the first one is not from "Othard", he's from "Dalmasca"

If we follow the MSQ it becomes clear that SB was planned instead of HW

No, both were planned. We had a lot to do with dragons and heretics near the end of ARR. And I'm pretty sure that Yoshi-P said that, when ARR was released, they already had written the story up to 4.0