I often use the simile of an onion for evaluating stories. Like an onion, a story has several layers. Take a children's book, for example. There's always the surface layer, the prima-facie-story that the small kids understand while you read the book to them. Then there's often a morale layer, something that the kids understand after spending some time thinking about the story. And there is also, very often, an adult layer that includes stuff, such as allegories, that no kid at the target group's age will understand, but the parents will. And so on.
If brothels are indeed just "donut shops", then either the writer did a terrible job for failing to engage on multiple layers, or the consumer did, for failing to recognise anything but the top surface layer
I prefer pastries, they have layers too!
Here´s the thing...you could certainly make the setting interesting, and make it play a crucial part in the story in such a way that you couldn't just tell the same story in a bakery or something. You could put the protagonist in the situation of catching one of their beloved companions in a drunken stupor, having seriously messed up a sex worker...blood, crushed bones and all sorts of grisly details included. Now the protagonist is faced with a truly challenging situation. Do you cover it up to protect the reputation? Do you offer compensation? Do you punish the offender? Beside that, the protagonist learns about a different, unflattering side of their companion, something which challenges their trust in the people closest to them. With the added important social lessons: 1) that abusive people aren't just typical bad guys that you can easily spot, even the most likable person can have a deeply disturbing side. 2) that sex workers face dangers and have very little protection and often no safety net to help them when something goes wrong. Such a story would have far reaching effects on the protagonist and their entire story, while portraying some of the ugly reality of prostitution and trafficking, and if I may offer some biased critique of my own storytelling, it would be dark and gritty.
But people here have clearly claimed that they don't want real world drama in their games, they don't want a story which pokes them with social politics. They want the bakery, where the sex worker is a bagel on a menu that can offer some comic relief or adult imagery. And this is how brothels and sex workers have largely been portrayed across many, many games (because...you know, give customers what they expect), including the previous two titles in the DA series. Where´s this onion you talk about? There was never any onion, so why does it bother you that it´s no longer there?
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