The Walking Dead: 400 Days (2013) 🧟‍♂️

Five Strangers, One Truck Stop, and a Bridge Between Seasons


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🎬 Trailers

Lets start by showing y’all the trailers shall we?

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📖 Non-Spoiler Plot Overview

400 Days is less of a “season” and more of a side story — a narrative experiment by Telltale. Instead of following Lee or Clementine, you play through five separate short stories set around a truck stop in Georgia, spanning the first 400 days of the outbreak.

Each vignette puts you in the shoes of a different survivor, and the choices you make shape whether they’ll later join a group that ties into Season 2. It’s fast, brutal, and feels more like a collection of character studies than a grand epic.


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👥 Character Rundown

Vince (Anthony Lam): Prisoner on a bus during the outbreak. His story is all about loyalty vs survival when handcuffed between dangerous men.

Wyatt (Jace Hall): Stoner everyman. His segment has a darkly comedic tone until things spiral into panic and paranoia.

Russell (Vegas E. Trip): A teenager who ends up hitching a ride with a dangerous man named Nate. His chapter is basically a crash course in “don’t trust strangers in the apocalypse.”

Bonnie (Erin Yvette): Addict trying to survive with a group. Her story blends guilt, betrayal, and accidental tragedy — and she’s the only one who carries directly into Season 2.

Shel (Cissy Jones): A woman trying to protect her little sister Becca. Her chapter is about moral compromise and how far you’ll go to keep your humanity.


And all of them orbit around the truck stop, which acts as the narrative hub for the anthology.

🎮 Gameplay – Telltale’s The Walking Dead

The Walking Dead games by Telltale are narrative-driven, choice-based adventures. They aren’t about fast reflexes or complex combat; they’re about decisions and consequences. Each episode plays like an interactive story where you move your character around, explore environments, talk to survivors, and make choices that can change relationships or even determine who lives and who dies.

Gameplay usually alternates between:

Dialogue trees – conversations where your responses (or silence) shape how characters see you.

Quick-time events (QTEs) – button prompts during tense action scenes like fending off walkers or escaping danger.

Exploration and puzzles – walking around areas, picking up items, or solving simple survival-based problems.


The hallmark of the series is its branching narrative. Even though major story beats eventually funnel back to a central path, the journey feels personal. Your version of Lee, Clementine, Javier, or anyone else will be shaped by the difficult choices you make.

In short, the gameplay isn’t about “winning” in a traditional sense — it’s about living with your choices and seeing how the story reacts to you. That’s what makes The Walking Dead stand out, even years later.



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⏱️ Pacing / Episode Flow

At only about 90 minutes long, 400 Days is quick but efficient. Each of the five vignettes is short (15–20 minutes), and you can play them in any order. The final scene stitches them together, setting up the possibility of these survivors joining a larger community in Season 2.


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✅ Pros

Fresh structure keeps things moving fast.

Strong performances, especially Bonnie and Vince.

Some stories (like Russell’s and Shel’s) hit surprisingly hard for how short they are.

Nice connective tissue between Season 1 and Season 2.



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❌ Cons

Too short to fully invest in the characters.

Some vignettes are forgettable compared to others.

The “choices matter” illusion is at its weakest here (most outcomes funnel the same way).

Feels more like DLC filler than an essential chapter.



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💭 Final Thoughts

400 Days is a fascinating little experiment — not as powerful as Season 1, but not without merit. It gave us a glimpse at new survivors and proved Telltale could juggle multiple perspectives. Problem is, it doesn’t quite stick the landing. Most of these characters barely matter moving forward, with Bonnie being the only one who really carries into Season 2.

It’s more of a narrative appetizer than a main course. But hey — for an hour and a half of tension, tragedy, and tough calls, it’s a solid stopgap between seasons.


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⭐ Rating

7/10 – Good short story collection, but only one or two really stick.


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⚠️ Spoiler Warning

Alright, let’s spill the guts — here come the spoilers.


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🧟 Spoilers

Each vignette ends with a harsh moral choice:

Vince deciding who to shoot to escape the prison bus.

Wyatt abandoning or saving his paranoid friend in the fog.

Russell choosing whether to follow or abandon Nate after his horrifying behavior.

Bonnie’s tragic involvement in Dee’s death during a botched escape.

Shel choosing whether to execute a group member or flee with Becca.


In the finale, Tavia arrives at the truck stop and offers to bring everyone to her community. Depending on your earlier choices, some characters agree, while others refuse. It feels like the start of something bigger — but in Season 2, only Bonnie plays a meaningful role, which undercuts the impact of the DLC.

Still, as a bridge, 400 Days shows how fractured and desperate survivors become when the world falls apart — and how hard it is to keep people together for long.