Girls' Frontline 2 Character Storyline Controversy: Tololo Goes Stargazing with Old Man, Leaving Players Feeling Like Side Characters

In a sign-in mission storyline in Girls' Frontline 2: Exilium, character Tololo assigns the player a task that turns out to be: accompanying an old man to stargaze. The result? Players grind through the mission and collect their rewards, while Tololo spends the entire evening stargazing with the old man — without them.

What makes it even more infuriating is the unlocked story dialogue, which characterizes the player as having "intentionally not joined" — as if the game scripted the perfect excuse for your absence.

The particularly flowery line "the driftwood drifts further and further away..." became the main target of internet mockery.

The comment section erupted immediately. Players mocked the "driftwood" line mercilessly — "the driftwood has drifted away, I can't even" and "nothing but a useless piece of driftwood" turned the pretentious dialogue into a full-blown meme. One player quipped: "Hard to cope with how poetic this tries to be. Shame the protagonist isn't me — so why am I even reading this?"

Sharp-eyed commenters pointed out that this storyline appears to be directly copied from the anime Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, specifically the arc where a halfling old man mourns his late wife. But the imitation fell flat. As one player put it bluntly: "The anime did it well. When your copy-paste version gets called out by both players and passersby, maybe the writers should consider a career change — a factory assembly line would suit them better."

Among the discussion, one player offered a surgical critique of the game's fundamental writing problem: the narrative approach essentially excludes the player from the story. The writing lacks character motivation and fails to weave characters into a cohesive ensemble narrative. The player argued that even a single added line — like "I connected with you because of my past experiences as the commander from the first game" — would be better than this persistent marginalization of the player character. Compared to how Frieren uses scene-triggered emotional storytelling, Girls' Frontline 2's writing amounts to an omniscient narrator's dry chronicle where the player has zero immersion and no emotional drive whatsoever.

Another commenter cut straight to the core of what this storyline really conveys: only veteran NTR fans can appreciate the hidden meaning here — the author's message boils down to "literally anyone except you, the protagonist, can be with this character." And you can't even complain, because nothing explicit happens. All you can say is: "What a blessing it is to play this game, huh."