Acorn trees

Based on some of the stuff this week and how much disrespect 22Cans has shown the community, why the hell not. You'll plant an acorn tree, and over time, you'll see it grow! 
And then we'll cut the scope like a mofo and the game will be about Acorn Tree cards, $4.00 a pop, but later we'll remove it and blame you for being thankless consumers. 
Also this post is reported to Valve for being off-topic.

Well, the forest growing mechanic itself is quite awesome.

Planting then like in B&W was cooler. Or, maybe a compromise - a somewhat expensive "create tree" and "create animal" miracles that can be customized to choose what kind of tree and creature is there to be. It can even be tied to the totemic creature you choose (yes, totemic trees are not abnormal and yes, Japanese local deities are more likely to be trees than animals). And after creation they can be propagated by normal means (tree maturation, enough food for animals).

We heard the people, forest planting is in, we had already the tools for it and we have licenses for Speedtree, so we could test things quickly. I want to also see what we can do with foliage actors and wind sweeping in run-time with your hands.....


....I'm going to admit that we've actually done that particular feature in another product before, so you might get to wave trees around with your God-hands or be the 'wind' in the trees by sweeping your hands across them. I'll have to check how many trees we can swipe to influence/bend, but I've actually worked on a tree that did that previously.

Honestly, an elder tree isn't mechanically different then a totem or any other asset that we use to signify the player's avatar/connection to the gameworld. Idol/Totem/Tree and possibly creature are all things we can interchange without breaking anything in game design or tech scope.