I just thought of something really meaningful about the return to Shadow Moses in MGS4

Imagine being 13 years old in 1999 and playing MGS1 on the PSX(because damn it, we all know we played M rated games long before 17) and working so hard to beat it and help Snake save the world. Imagine later on Getting you're first PS2 and playing MGS2, then finally MGS3. 18 Years old is what you'd be as you completed it in 2004.

Spin-offs and PSP games come and go, you pick-up the Twim Snakes to relive the beginning with nicer graphics and some point and maybe pick up the HD collection to gear up for MGS4.

You'd be 23 years old, barely out of college and entering the outside world and full adult life when you picked it up if you did so around launch. You reach Shadow Moses and it all hits you that you've been with Snake from the moment it began here, and now this place that symbolized so much to come is nothing but neglected rubble and haunting memories. You hear that haunting music and the voices of the past as you make you're way through the ruins towards the final battle, and Snake's final chapter.

You face Crying Wolf in the clearing, echoing one of the most emotional boss fights from the first game and it ends with a ghostly wolf coming to carry her body away, away from where the metaphorical blood of Sniper Wolf stains the ground in the spot where she also fell. You can't tell if it's the game of your own memories as those words "You're not a Dog, you're a Wolf" echo in your ears.

As you face the final battle those emotions stay with you as you realize it all ends here, you've been by Snake's side for a decade and as a phase of your life ends, so does his story, the one you've been a part of for a decade ends. You feel the same rush of emotions as everyone on screen because you've fought along side Solid Snake for these 10 long years and now it's over, the battle is won and the world has been set free, along with it's hero who spends his last few months free from war and dies peacefully in his sleep after a life of violence and pain.

You cry a little, because you feel like you've said goodbye to an old friend. You replay all the games but it's still like no more than reliving old memories and adventures because you know this hero's story has come to it's end, and the final chapter has closed.