This worked out fairly well. It's actually very similar to how I did the leaves in WandS 2. Big leafy orbs just stacked on top of each other (except 3D). These are basically cubes that I subdivided once (so, they had their corners flattened into a ballish shape), then I pulled triangles out of the sides. At first I just shaded each triangle to be one really big leaf, but after playing around with the transparency on the edges a bit I think I could make the individual leaves a bit smaller. Maybe give them a maple leaf shape.
Hacsev
Nice, can't wait for it to come out! Is it going to be open world?