"No Brothels to be in DA4" as per Mark Darrah Tweet.

First of all, there were complaints about the brothels way back when. 
Second, to answer your question they could have any number of reasons. The resources were seen as better spent elsewhere, it didn't fit the story, we don't go to the parts of town that have it, they simply didn't want to, and so on and so forth. None of those are a conspiracy against anyone or has some underlying mentality or agenda, it's simply a decision. 

But there was a reason. We may never know, but obviously they came to the conclusion to take out brothels and there is a reason why. The same reason there was no blood magic and the same reason there were no healing spells.

Weren't we always there? What else is this thread about?

Take them out as in no longer include them in the game. There is a reason why. Just like if they took out romances, a race, or other stuff. There is a reason, especially since they were in the 1st two games.

But hey, we have like 18 months to speculate. Lets just hope this frees them up to make better side quest and an emergent open world.

I love GoT, and I like the Witcher. That being said, I enjoy it for other reasons than "it's dark."

For all this talk about dark themes, characters, and plot, I don't feel like I'm defending DAI by insistinng that they exist in the game. I wonder why we're not talking about how well the game explores its themes, the quality of the character development, why the narrative is compelling (or not).

And unless the game has something new to say about prostitution that makes the inclusion of a brothel more than an uninspired trope, shoehorned to put a checkmark on what seems to be an oddly specific "darkness" checklist, its inclusion or exclusion has no bearing on the questions above.

smilesja

I actually never used the buzz words of "Political Correctness", "Social Justice", or ever implied a conspiracy. It could just plain be that the writers themselves are very monogamous and a lot of monogamous people have problems wrapping their minds around the idea of Ethical Polyamory and/or Ethical non monogamy. Also a poly relationship is very complex, I'm not sure it would even be possible to program. What I'm actually talking about is Ethical Mon Monogamy. The conversation with Peebee when she says, "how about some casual sex, no strings?" and the protag can either agree with NSA sex, or disgree about the lack of strings, or simply not have sex with her at all. That was a perfect conversation for two people practicing consensual non romantic sex. Liam's was a bit messy with it coming AFTER the sex, but sometimes in the heat of the moment, maybe it comes up after instead of before. Conveniently for the timing of this conversation, Liam honestly doesn't seem to care either way, leaving the power to make it more entirely in the protag's hands. So it's not messy- for the player, nor for Liam.

I will give MEA that much, which is they that brought a couple of scenarios of consensual casual sex (ethical non monogamy) into RP. However, I am unaware if two timing is something that is recognized by your LI in the game, as I considered myself to be in a budding relationship with Jaal by the time I was making out with Reyes on the roof. But I don't think that was Jaal being understanding of my roaming eyes. as regardless of where I thought we were at, we weren't an item until we had an awkward as fuck conversation about his dead bug collection.

But if I had had the bug discussion, would the flirt options have still been available? Or were they available but rebuffed? (because obviously Reyes would have heard I was a thing with my squad mate and totally respected that. He's a very solidly moral guy).

Maybe it was purely convenience to lock you out of romances because they couldn't be bothered to, immaturely? (sarcasm), include the same Romantic Exclusion Discussions in DAI as they did in DAO? Maybe people thought it demeaned Leliana and Morrigan to get jealous, but that's LIFE. And people shouldn't assume Romantic Exclusion just because you've been physical. It's especially odd coming from Morrigan, who implies that she and the Warden were casual from the get go. The jealousy, in a way, is actually part of her character arc of developing feelings for someone she had meant only to use.

But then they would have had to have let you have conversations (as in, paid to have them voiced, MAYBE with cinematic scenes, but not necessarily considering a lot of touchy conversations that are just voiced while two characters are near each other) with the people you were kissing and banging. And they wanted their resources to go elsewhere. The DAI writers didn't want to spend resources on immersive relationship complications of a promiscuous Inquisitor, plain and simple. but we gotta recognize that removes the ability to RP a couple of different kind of characters. But that also has to mean the writers didn't find adding the support for such a variety of characters to be important. My theory being, that they're very monogamous themselves and/or have a lot of Strict Sexual Christian values, or they somehow got numbers that their fanbase is similarly made up of veyr monogamous people and/or having strict sexual christian values. So only players like me were even seeing the content that involved romancing multiple people at once.

And considering, at least in Cullen's case, he NOTICES and REBUFFS a quiz soft locked (ugh soft locks) with another, I do wonder a little bit if there was intent for this content to be there and they simply had to cut it.

This has already gone on a long bit. I wanted to add, somewhat connected, that a Hawke that slept with Fenris and then rebounded to Anders... his line about "Anders better take care of Hawke". THAT LINE made me super intrigued about Fenris. Now he's my favorite LI, possibly out of the entire pile. And it's only because the DA2 writers decided to put resources into tracking HAwke's current and past partners and include Jealousy conversation that I now have Fenris in that spot.

This stuff I want is not just so I can "bang them all and in the darkness use them". It immerses me, let's me see more of my companions thinking, and makes me love them as narrative characters MORE.

Edit Add: So while some people argue the lack of ability to cheat and the lack of brothels is FORWARD and PC and SJW or whatever the Fudge, I actually consider it BACKWARD and weakening game media support for equal sexual rights and freedoms. It's immature/over simplification to brush a relationship as either "together" or "not".

And no, I'm not implying that Bioware is ruinign the world with the lack of a brothel. But they gave me an awesome world where I could have shameless sex and then they took it back. And the Relationships are becoming shallower and more similar to a grade school kid's idea of romance. "Some day I will meet ONE PERSON and we'll be TOGETHER FOREVER."

Yeah, I remember when asked about it Bioware said making a poly romance is a nightmare between all the programming, writing, voice work, etc needed for all the variations. The only way it could work is if there were two characters already together and the PC can join them in a poly relationship.

phoray

Or like @carefull suggests, that it's difficult to program so many relationships. Bioware is pretty liberal on relationships considering that you can be polygamous in the first two games I believe. One could argue that we don't get into too many relationships in DAI because they struggled with the engine and since as mentioned before you can be in multiple relationships in ME: A, I can see this being a possiblity in DA 4.

Oh, but don't you know? All things in the game come pre-programmed and devs just make a decision what to leave in the game based on what they like/don't like!

Not sure what you are implying but between DA2 and the development of DAI and now DA4, Bioware had a reason to no longer include brothels despite not being something that a large portion of gamers complained about.

Well at least some of them.