I found Sofia to be a bland character, she didn’t interest me at all. But I have to say that Judgment has been growing on me, mainly due to Paduk’s addition. I definitely wouldn’t mind her being included in the game.
From what I’ve so far been seeing in my very extensive and very scientifically reliable research in fanbase demands on the forums (/sarcasm), there seems to be significant more support for Barrick than for example Jace. So I think there would be more pressure on TC to include Barrick than Jace.
In game, Barrick is the only character shown to smoke. I can imagine it being a bit awkward for TC if they include him after publicly announcing they wouldn’t add smoking characters in Gears 5 (kind of cheap marketing since smoking has never really been a thing in the Gears games), but there should be creative ways around it. Their way of thinking might be that including him without a sigar might outrage his fans, so the easiest way is to just not add him to the game(I hope this wouldn’t be used as an excuse for not including Valera, as it would increase the demand to include Barrick as well). If it’s true then that would be a wrong way of thinking, I believe.
It’s a bit nonsensical anyway. I’m anti-smoking, but it’s not as if I’d be offended by the inclusion of Barrick in the game, or that I would think less or get angry at TC because of it. TC has been actively promoting alcoholism (it’s basically Oscar’s character definition), which really isn’t a funny addiction and kills a lot of people annually as well. If they wanted to do that right, they should have added Oscar’s alcoholism with the problems you get yourself into with, not as a joke. He actually had some character development potential in Gears 5, like possibly showing more leadership qualities and a struggle to fighting his addiction but his sole purpose in the game was to have him killed by Kait to increase her trauma. An opportunity wasted.
You are right that probably not everybody will get the characters he or she prefers. Still, I am hopeful because they’ve already added characters such as Karn and Jermad, with the latter having its first introduction in the Gears games. Gears 5 should still have quite some runtime left, the game isn’t even past the 1.5 years mark yet. There’s plenty of time for new character inclusions. If they want to keep up adding new characters with every OP, they would need to have a significant list of characters to introduce. The Swarm is probably going to be the most interesting, because we’ve almost got all basic in game characters already. It would be cool if we get to see some extra non-game lore inclusions.
I’ve never played Judgment online, so I’ve never got to play with Brand. But I know her backstory and seen some footage of her on YouTube, so she does look like she would be a great addition to the game. I believe about a year ago, someone from TC responded to a tweet that she would be included, just not in the short time. And wasn’t she included in Gears Pop! that should make it more likely for her as well then, right?