Unmarked Spoilers Below!
Having them still at work may also have helped deflect suspicions their friends and family may have had about their whereabouts. If Olive's still being voiced by Olivia in cartoon appearances throughout the nineties, surely Olivia must be just fine, etc.
Rex, meanwhile, doesn't have a personal grudge against Bucky or Brandon; he just brings Bucky back to the entrance of the layer, wanting to be left alone.
- Wouldn’t really explain why Brandon does it though, for obvious reasons.
- It also wouldn't explain why the Starlings will still go after Bucky even if Brandon is in the same area as them.
Olive acts not like herself during that moment because she isn't entirely herself. The cartoon characters don't originate from the game world; they're from a cartoon. Therefore, they're just as much outsiders to Nulla Terra as the Starlings are. And thus, they don't have any advantage over the Starlings who are trying to influence the game themselves.
Bucky himself is in a similar boat, except the fellow outsider he wants to take his body back from is you. He isn't quite as bad off as his friends because his own morality and the player's are still mostly aligned, despite your very different goals. And like with his friends, neither will is entirely in control of Bucky's body: Bucky can control what he says and acts like, but not where he goes.
In other words: You are player one. Olivia, Gary, and Nathan are players two, three, and four. Or alternatively, you are Bucky's Dweller.
Fortunately, it also goes the other way around. Even when the Dwellers are unleashed, the cartoon characters are still in there. Instead of voluntarily holding back, the Dwellers could be being actively stopped from harming Bucky by the souls of Olive, Giovanni, and Walter fighting back against the souls of Olivia, Gary, and Nathan.
- Partially Jossed, at least with the reason the Dwellers don't just kill Bucky; Word of God says they gladly would kill him as readily as they kill everyone else if it weren't for the fact that he's holding the game world together.
That said, though the chances are high of him coming back again, he's not going to be okay. Poor guy is still going to remember all the stuff that he's been put through, along with the knowledge that he — not just Brandon, he specifically — was indirectly responsible for Connor's death, at least according to Connor. He may survive, but he's still going to be in the same mental state that drove him to attempt it. One thing's for sure: he needs help.
The answer? Cogware promised an artificial intelligence in the game, one that could learn and grow as time went on with each repeated playthrough, just like the rumors about Super Mario 64 and its own gameplay. Unlike those rumors, Cogware succeeded. Stumbler and Chief Wulf know about things they logistically shouldn't, seem to have access to the Internet, and (in Chief Wulf's case) can straight up remember every time the game ends. Bucky seems to have some semblance of intelligence as well, if his reaction to all of the events in the game have anything to say. Additionally, all three have interesting things to say about their creation, with Chief Wulf feeling as though his creator hates him and his world, Stumbler being extremely self conscious about the fact that he was based on a terminally ill person, and Bucky straight up hates his creator for the torment he was put through in his early shorts, something that shouldn't even be a factor in the game. Whether or not Olive, Giovanni, and Walter share this is unknown, but Olive goes off the rails describing Olivia's death if her minigame is failed enough times. Heck, Stumbler has an email where he talks about the fictional reality that the Broadside Beach ARG takes place in, and if those are taken as canon, that opens up a new can of worms considering he talks about his creators somewhat often.
Seems like Cogware did it, having created sentient characters in their game. The only problem? The game was in its infancy when Mark Mullins tested it. The game's characters didn't grow as much as it should with just one playthrough, and as such, the game was no longer. Now the characters are stuck in an elaborate exposé, stuck in the same cycle of seeing Broadside's transgressions again and again
This also seems to make Broadside and Cogware parallels to each other. Both companies created living versions of Bucky and the gang, and in both instances, the characters are suffering. It's just that Broadside needed the bodies of dead people to make their Starlings work, while the A.I. Cogware created was their code alone.