I thought of an idea of what they could have done, what if we started out the game as our ghost? We avoid the fallen/hive on earth until we find one of three corpses. One is an Exo, another a Human and finally an Awoken body, when you find one you can scan it and it'll say something like "Could it be?" with a "Yes / No" box for us to choose or "X for yes, Triangle to leave" and that's how you decide your race.
Once picked the character creation screen comes up, and you get to create your character by choosing gender and then the little details you want.
THEN we make our way to a ship, or just fight our way to the tower and continue from there.
((I want to flesh out an idea of the level design but I figure if it's a part of the Earth map we don't ever see again that's fine))
What do you think?