I don't like the way grass is rendered in this game : it looks too polygonal...
Yeah, they went with a very technically impressive solution that unfortunately has arguably worse looking end result than other games with cassical solutions.
While most games use larger alpha-tested cards with a cut-out texture of multiple weed leaves on it, GoT seems to have modeled each and every idividual leaf as its own model.
The pro of that aproach is the grass feels much more volumetric and 3-Dimentional. Also, if they are actually deforming them individually as well, this ends up looking much more lively as well.
The con of that aproach is that their fully poligonal grass blades are not high-poly enough to have smooth silhouettes, so up-close each individual blade looks way more pointy and gamey than the classical textured card aproach.
It looks high-tech but artificial, something I noted to be a constant in the art/tech direction of this game in more aspects than only this one.
My techie side can't help but marvel that an open world game is managing that level of foliage density with fully modeled curving blades at all. I feel the same way about the abundance of swaying cloth and the density of their meshes, but them too also have a bit of a "simulationish" look to them.
When it comes to performance, I still wonder how the full modeled vegetation aproach compares to the cards one. For what they spend on extra geometry, they save on fill-rate killing alpha testing and overdraw. Yet also, for what they save on that and texture bandwith, they must loose a bit on worse raster pixel-quad performance (tiny polys are not your GPU's friends).
While impressive, it does not come without precedent, as Zelda BoTW on the WiiU of all places did manage it. The main difference is on zelda those blades were single polys sticking up. Saving on triangles but limiting the look of their grass to a very slecific type. Tsushima is like a spiritual successor to the aproach, taking the next logical step: add more geo, and bend those fuckers.
The thing is one might argue that by Zelda not trying to reproduced curved shapes, it saved itself from the embaracement of when your poly budget fails to give you enough tris for it to look round enough. Tsushima just took that blemish on the chin with a "this is as good as it gets on a ps4" the same way Zelda did with their completely rigid weeds.