I wish he could pop up just so that Quinn can get something. Tho it does make me wanna say something about his situation.I really hope Bubble reappears soon. Jen is my favorite character in the game. I dunno, she just clicks right; badass tsundere merc girl. I hope we get to see the end of her story and future expansions or something soon.
Bubble's disappearance is definitely showing a detriment to how the companion system works to a degree. If he didn't have Quinn under his belt to work with, it'd probably be a similar situation to Night Trap, where real life got him by the neck and he had vanished for months (at one point a year or so iirc) at a time with no warning until afterwards. Shit happens, and there will be cases where you are not in a position to tell others what's going on when they happen. But because NT didn't have big things like followers to manage like CoC2's companions work, and because of how TiTS followers work in comparison, there can be some leniency to it.
With CoC2, you have to be on top of companions as the story goes on, it's not like ship members on TiTS who can be written independent from the storyline (at this point, it's a bonus if they are bc it allows for immersion). Obviously the character clause is a thing, but then you will get the Berwyn fiasco in a 2.0 format. But also the difference with Berry vs Quinn is that we don't know what happened to Bubble exactly. There's nothing said about what happened to him. It could be another example of life getting him and he could be unable to update bc of RL issues for all we know. We have no idea. He was always a very active member in the community, be it the forum or Discord, so him vanishing suddenly is frankly a cause for concern to some degree at least. Especially when the lead dev himself knows as little to none as we do, ya know?
Like sure, it's very easy to work your way into being a trusted writer to where you can be allowed to have that committed status for companions, but what about when you literally are not able to? What if life gets you somehow away from the community for months to where you CAN'T update? Not even behind the scenes? It'd definitely be one thing if it was just in the Discord, Wsan after all doesn't engage with the forums anymore but does through other means and it's how we still get Brint stuff.
But this is looking like straight up vanishing, and tbh I am actually concerned. What happened to Bubble? Will we ever know? I doubt he would just dip like that without good reason. I get that he was always a sorta polarizing figure in the community, but I can't be the only one actually worried right? Maybe I'm being too personal about it (and frankly the last thing I want is to seem parasocial or some shit. IG it just feels like it's a valid concern in this case).
Frankly it'd just be nice if he did come back at this point because then we know he's okay.