I don't know unity very much, but would it be possible to assign all the tree assets to a certain asset group, and write a script which would allow to lower the opacity of all these assets by 90% or whatever fits, with the press of a button? That could be an elegant solution for trees blocking the view... unity experts, is that possible?

why not just render the treetops transparently or not at all when the distance to camera position get really short-

That might be too complicated, because you have to define first what treetops are, then constantly calculate the distance and the viewing angle. The other approach seems more simple to me. Moreover, due to the fact that you have a 3D view with huge trees, disabling the treetops wouldn't always be enough.

you could just make it a general rule that if the distance between camera position and arbitrary geometry reaches a threshold, you render that part of the geometry transparently. alot of games do that, so stuff doesn't block your view!

One could do that, but that wouldn't work if the camera is zoomed out too far. And it would render buildings transparent (or vehicles), which might look strange.

hehe yea well I'm sure something can be worked out rather quickly. it's a very common problem in 3d games and it's been tackled by countless other games before so it shouldn't be too hard for the devs to figure something out hopefully :)

Actually that won't be bad, because there are places (the prison comes to mind) where huge walls can block your line your sight and make moving very annoying.

Either this or them allowing free camera rotation.

Agree. Free moving & rotating camera is very crucial. It's very annoying & very boring to look scenes only from 4 directions.