A game plot device called the 'Great Wall Train,' officially named 'Great Wall' in English, serves as — a military expansion machine that forcibly demolishes civilian villages. This drama was loaded with gunpowder from the very name.
On January 8, 2024, a thread on the NGA forum asking about the 'Great Wall Train' lore in Girls' Frontline 2: Exilium quickly ignited fierce discussion. It all started when players discovered that a key faction device in the game — a mobile wall mechanism used to purify wastelands and claim territory — was officially named 'Great Wall' in its English localization.
According to lore-savvy players, the game's world has been contaminated into an uninhabitable wasteland by relic technology. The quasi-governmental faction's purification method involves: first deploying military forces and mercenaries to clear contaminated zones, then using the 'Great Wall Train' — a mobile wall apparatus — to encircle and purify each area. Sounds reasonable, right? The catch: during this process, 'events similar to forced demolitions' occur against wasteland villages and tribes. After all, the military has both guns and the moral high ground of 'purification,' so ordinary folks in the wasteland just have to suck it up.
Even juicier is the character backstory. There's a character named Esther, from a desert homeland, whose home was destroyed by the 'Great Wall' Train. Her chosen method of revenge? Bomb attacks — essentially terrorism.
The official English name for the 'Great Wall Train' directly uses 'Great Wall' — and in the English-speaking world, 'Great Wall' is overwhelmingly associated with China's Great Wall (The Great Wall of China). This became the crux of the controversy.
The comment section quickly split into factions. Some players tried to defend it, arguing 'without "the" it's not the Chinese Wall, basic English.' But opponents immediately presented evidence: 'Great Wall' without the definite article can still refer to the Chinese structure, complete with screenshot proof.
Others cited the Armored Core game series as precedent, claiming 'the Japanese used it too' to argue it wasn't borrowing from the Chinese Wall concept. But one diligent fact-checker actually dug through the Armored Core Wiki and found that the 'Great Wall' in that franchise appeared in Armored Core: For Answer (2008, PS3/Xbox 360, ~150K copies sold worldwide, no Chinese release). Its backstory involved a fictional arms conglomerate combining elements from China, the US, Japan, and the Philippines. The player fired back with a razor-sharp rebuttal: 'What the Japanese do with their setting is their business — the Great Wall isn't the backbone of Japanese national identity. But you're a Chinese company, copying the name word for word without a single thought? And when designing your boneheaded story, nothing felt off to you?'
Another player contributed geographic research: apart from China's Great Wall, there are virtually no other well-known structures called 'Great Wall' globally. There's the 'Great Wall of Gorgan' in Iran — a minor ruin named in 1990. The player concluded: 'For most normal human beings on this planet, Great Wall means one thing: the one in China.'
As the debate escalated, some directly challenged the devs: 'You're a Chinese company, and in your game, the Great Wall is a military demolition machine that destroys civilian homes — nothing felt weird during the writing process?' Others pointed out that the character whose homeland was destroyed by the Great Wall Train went on to commit bomb-based terrorism — that narrative chain doesn't exactly read as an homage to the spirit of the Great Wall.
Of course, some players tried to offer rational interpretations, suggesting that if you read the 'Great Wall Train' as a wall dividing the purified zone from the contaminated wasteland, it works fine within the post-apocalyptic setting. Others cracked jokes about China's Belt and Road Initiative, and someone even derailed the thread by bringing up the Chaos Dwarfs' train cannons from Total War: Warhammer — though those are daemon engines and an entirely different flavor of controversy.
As of now, the game's developers have made no public statement regarding the 'Great Wall Train' naming controversy. But the debate continues to simmer. One name, one villain, one terrorism storyline — is it just standard post-apocalyptic worldbuilding, or a loaded metaphor hidden in plain sight? You be the judge.
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