Over the years, video games have made a habit of reusing certain environmental objects. The plain crate, which can be broken or pushed, is a common sight. The explosive red barrel is another, and can be found in many action games. So can waist-high walls, to either provide cover for the player or prevent them from leaving the play area. Seasoned gamers have gotten used to seeing these sorts of recurring cliches across many games, and it usually takes a more experimental title to break away from staples.
One particularly widespread environmental object is tall grass. This is exactly what it sounds like, serving as tall grass that can be used to obscure things or act as a slight change of scenery. Fans of the Pokemon series will remember their first game’s professor warning them not to go into tall grass without a Pokemon, as even though it visually covers only part of a player's sprite, just about anything can be hiding in tall grass. Other gamers will be more familiar with the stealth applications of tall grass, including its next major usage in Elden Ring. Tall grass is another environmental detail that has spread throughout the industry, and it has been used in many different ways over the years.
Tall Grass is Great for Hiding The Player
One of the widest uses of tall grass in video games is for stealth gameplay. Tall grass represents an easily visualized area that a player can hide in. Patches of tall grass can be placed organically, and also deliberately, near encounters designed for stealth. This technique works for just about every kind of game, and allows for easy implementation of stealth mechanics. Interacting with tall grass can usually be done simply by stepping in and pressing a button to assume a stealthy stance.
Examples of this can be found all over. The modern Hitman 2 incorporated long grass as a part of its new cover system, which was then backported to Hitman 1. Other games like Horizon Zero Dawn, various Assassin's Creed titles, and the Far Cry franchise have set up grass to hide the player. FromSoftware already joined this trend with tall grass in Sekiro, which appeared in some areas to make stealth kills easier. Elden Ring will probably follow this stealth implementation where tall grass will enable players to thin the herd, but not trivialize fights entirely. One more interesting implementation of tall grass as a stealth tool is in later Metal Gear Solid games, during which Snake needs to mind where he is and what he's wearing to properly make use of grass. This contextuality allows the status of tall grass to potentially apply to much shorter patches.
Enemies and Challenges Can Hide in Tall Grass
Of course, if players can use tall grass for stealth, then it makes sense for enemies to do the same. Tall grass can serve as a convenient way to spawn enemies without the player seeing them. It can also realistically hide enemies, as sufficiently high grass will obscure the player's view even without a mechanic attached. Tall grass can potentially be taller than a human being, and things like corn or wheat fields serve the same purpose. Forests may be dark and boxed in with trees on every side, but a field of tall grass might be more intimidating in that it doesn't restrict inhabitants’ movement, only their vision.
Because of how easily things hidden in tall grass can surprise a player, some horror games have naturally adopted the design approach. Cornfields are especially popular and have shown up in games like Left 4 Dead and Outlast 2, with powerful enemies hidden in the dark fields. Tall grass also acts as a great visual shorthand for conveying to Pokemon players that they will not be able to see if or when a wild Pokemon will jump at them. A similar form of stealth is present in some MOBAs like League of Legends and Pokemon Unite, which contain tall grass that hides anything inside of it from everyone else’s screens. In situations where both players and enemies can take advantage of tall grass' stealthy properties, they will be motivated to play in a more cautious manner.
Tall Grass is Surprisingly Versatile
It's easy to see how tall grass can hide people, but it's also effective at other things. Before game mechanics were sophisticated enough that tall grass could reliably be used to hide players or obscure vision, it tended to be an interactive object. Sometimes it could be walked through, and other times it couldn't. Often, there were other attributes to the tall grass as well, such as hiding items or, in tactical games, offering some kind of statistical bonus.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is the first Zelda game to introduce grass. Players could cut the grass and bushes to find items and hidden paths. Plenty of valuable things could be found in that grass, although the different approach to items that Breath of the Wild took meant its grass had to fulfill other roles, like being fuel for a fire. Strategy RPGs like Valkyria Chronicles and certain Fire Emblem entries used tall grass as special areas. Long grass and thickets could be used to increase defense and evasion, another sensible interpretation of a character hiding.
With so many uses, tall grass has spread throughout the industry to visually mark mechanically different areas, and has served gamers and designers well throughout its tenure.