I frankly don't understand why Obsidian didn't (yet?) do this. I can understand the devs not creating, for example, a pet Yao Guai. This way they'll have something new to introduce in future installments. In this case though, we already have access to the companions we'd like (Dean, The Merge, Follows-Chalk, Joshua) but not in the locations we'd like. I really can't understand the reasoning behind that. For Dean especially. What, he got eaten by a coyote halfway to Vegas or something? Why isn't he there?