I would've too. But bringing him back as the pseudo-mentor character from hell and a weird Mia-Godot amalgation wasn't the worst way to do it. Though...his friends are implied to still be in his life? What few mentions they get seem to indicate they're still around. He has DVDs from Maya in his hospital room (and talks about her as a current acquaintance), and is constantly wandering off to do things off-screen, meaning we don't see half of who he knows where he's going. More to the point, the context in which he calls Trucy and Apollo people who are important to him is when he's assuring [spoiler] that he'll take care of them. which is a pretty understandable context to say something like that. And even then it's not worded as "THEY'RE THE ONLY ONES LEFT IN MY LIFE." We don't really have much confirmation one way or the other that they're completely gone. Apollo doesn't see all that much of him in the game. So of course he doesn't see too much of them.