Meh, they all look alike

Hmm. That's not how I read that scene, but I read it in translation, so maybe its clearer in Polish. Oh well, either way she's definitely carrying a lot of baggage because of it. Still, she uses her beauty to seduce men whenever she feels like it, so she must be at least a bit of a looker.

Are you suggesting the introduction of therapists to resolve some of these issues?

Geralt as a therapist....not as he only says Mhm...to sorceresses.

Dandelion as a therapist...not as he would only cite poetry and end up with Mhm.

Zoltan as a therapist...maybe as dwarves do everything better, just ask them.

Roche as a therapist...not as he would add to any complex while ordering more food.

Ioroveth as a therapist...he could work as long as you had scaly skin and dragon breath.

Loredo as a therapist...psychosis not withstanding....uh...no.

Conclusion:
It would seem the only character best able to treat the sorceress would be Our Mystery Merchant.

Well that would require another session naturally. Group Therapy perhaps?

=D

"Perhaps I can help you with that hump."
"What hump?"

Maybe a physical therapist would be more helpful. Triss is good at that sort of thing. She's especially good at checking for internal injuries.

The way I interpretted a section from The Last Wish was that all soceresses eventually have deformaties repaired; things that occurred due to environmental influences could all be fixed. Only the really gifted ones had the power to alter their appearance such as changing their face, body shape or eye color. Here is an except from The Last Wish. For those of you who have access to the same edition that I have, the Orbit paperback with a red cover, it starts on page 302, and I am copying it exactly as written, so please don't bother telling me that you don't need an s after the apostrophe of of a noun ending in s. That is how it's written in the book and I'm just copying it: The first part that sticks out to me is that the list of things typically altered are either poorly healed injuries or environmentally induced defects. It implies to me that if what was hidden under all those deformaties was only somewhat good looking, then that is what they got.

The second part that sticks out to me are these sentences, "not many would describe sorceresses as good looking," and. "The result was psuedo-pretty women." This, to me, reinforces that what gets fixed are only injuries, environmentally induced defects and scars, which could or could not result in a drop-dead gorgeous women based on her genetics.

I think I also recall something in Blood of Elves where they mention that only the most powerful sorceresses can alter their appearance, but even then it is just an illusion and not real body alteration. I don't have the time or interest to search through it right now just to find it.

Ultimately, I think what we have here is something that is very typical in video game development. A developer, mostly composed of men, making women in the game as drop-dead gorgeous as they can because they want to and not because it is what is stated in the text. Even in the first game, there are several areas where it went against canon. So it is not a stretch to assume that they have done the same thing with sorceresses because they wanted some extra eye candy in their game.

And P.S. to GOG, you guys really need to implement a "preview post" function on these forums.

I always read that bit as implying that they were pretty in a slightly uncanny valley/photoshopped-looking way (for instance, that same story describes Yennefer as having slightly wrong facial/body proportions) which would fit the whole deconstructive tendency of those short stories, in this case a take on the "beautiful sorceress" thing. But I agree with you that most likely the character design by the developer that designed a playboy spread for one of their characters is more likely just to be aimed at making the characters attractive.

I forgot to add in a little part at the end in defense of CDP stating that there might be a case of information being lost in translation from Polish to English that is affecting how I interpret those statements.

All the same, I definitely need to re-read The Last Wish. The first time I was still getting used to the author's narrative style and might have missed quite a bit along the way.

I remember reading their disguise was an illusion, that's why Geralt could "see" glimpses of Yenn's deformity. My books weren't in English :)

And I totally agree, character design suffers from "generic pretty girl" cliche, even though sorceresses have an excuse. Which is too bad because I love the diversity in design of male characters. I keep thinking how I'll be pissed off if Yenn turns out to be some super pretty girl... I mostly imagine her looking like Mother Gothel from Tangled :|

I believe the books mention they use magic to make themselves look… better :)
Now being from Poland and living in English speaking country I read Last Wish in both language versions.
The way I read it was that Gerald saw that she was something less beautiful in the past by the way she moved and acted…
Basically while the magic has washed away the physical defects… the mental scars from carrying them in the past remained noticeable to a trained eye…

Do you know if they do this by actually altering their looks physically, or is it by creating an illusion? I'm tending to the latter because there seems to be one case (Vilgefortz' female assistant) and Geralt's remark about how sorceresses can't do what mimics/shifters do with altering appearance physically

It's in The Last Wish, I believe in the scene where Yennefer has cast the spell on Dandelion. Geralt notices several mild imperfections about her; he tries to hide it but fails. The specifics I can't recall, or if the word "lopsided" was used. I know she's described as pretty but not nearly enough to ever be royalty or any such thing.

Well, this is an interesting question…

Given that those born under the sign of the Black Sun (Eclipse) are meant to be mutated inside one way or another (or at least that is what some mages and sorceress say… and that in itself was an abomination and/or very unusual). I would have to suggest that the sorceress are not quite capable of fully altering their physical form or at the very least those spells are very powerful and perhaps very dangerous…

On the other hand if it is an illusion, it would need to effect other senses, after all Geralt and Yen have been intimate and I am sure he would have been able to noticed that what he is touching is not actually what he is looking at.

Quite obviously there are realistic limits to the magic, after all Yen wanted the Genie for more than just display purposes… but since teleporting and other similarly powerful magic does exist I would have to deduct that the actual spells used are a mixture of illusion and in some degree physical alteration.

So a plastic surgery of magic kind…
But just like with plastic surgery, the underlying conditions and years of emotional and mental scars do not always go away.

So... no easy and final answer here.

I think Ebon-Hawk is right. Geralt reads Yennefer's behavior as "off", but her body really is repaired. She loses and regains her sight later in the saga, and that's definitely not an illusion. Yennefer's natural deformity was healed, not just disguised, but being abused as a child because of it made her very bitter. Geralt realizes what the problem must have been and then forces himself to forget it because he doesn't want her to feel embarrassed around him.

Vilgefortz's assistant, Lydia, is treated as an exception by the other sorceresses: she was injured by a powerful and complicated curse, and the damage was so bad and so permanent that she has to resort to an illusion to appear normal.