We are these: http://i.imgur.com/4PjEzUD.jpg [spoiler]No. I will not stop. [/spoiler]

We aren't zombies but technically we are the "walking dead". After all, we were dead. Now we're walking, jumping, shooting and blowing up Gods. Except Exos, they're just the Walking Unplugged.

Does the ghost grimoire not advise you that they searched through the ancient dead for potential guardians? Edited: grumpier is not grimoire iPhone!!!

So, not all Guardians started off dead. We see in two places that Ghosts can turn living beings into Guardians. [quote]From the deep black came the Awoken, their eyes haunted. Exos marched in the refugee columns, cloaked in moss and shattered memories. [b]And among them came the Ghosts, beginning their search.[/b][/quote] This was taken from Ghost Fragments: the Dark Ages, and we can clearly see from that last sentence that Ghosts were searching among the living to find a potential wielders of the Light. [quote]Then a confirmation of the horrible truth I had already accepted, as Jaren's Ghost came to a halt a few paces in front of me. I exhaled and slumped forward. Still standing, but broken. The tiny Light looked me over with a curious tilt to its axis, then shot a beam of light over my body. Scanning me as it had done the very first time we met. I looked up. Staring into its singular glowing eye. And it spoke...[/quote] This quote comes from Ghost Fragment: The Last Word 3. We can see here that after Jaren Ward died, his Ghost returned to the caravan and sought out Shin specifically. It is at this point that Shin Malphur becomes a Guardian, even though he had not yet died. And my last point is this: Despite our Guardian having been dead before, he/she is [b]not[/b] a zombie. In this particular case, a zombie would be akin to a lifeless husk driven by magic. This clearly isn't the case, for if it were, we wouldn't have a will. My second point of evidence is simply that in a gunfight, if your healthbar falls into the red zone, you can hear the characters heart beat pounding in their ears. This clearly means that all of our other organ systems work as well, including the nervous system, which is why our character grunts/screams in pain sometimes. I do not know how this would work with Exo's, seeing as even their internal secrets are unknown to the Exo's themselves.

I feel like some were originally supposed to be chosen from the living. The opening they used was probably the Exo being reactivated. Humans can live hundreds of years in Destiny, and no one knows how long an Awoken can live as far as I know.

In the beginning the traveler said "we are the Borg"

It's why anyone who didn't choose 'awoken' are fake guardian wannabes :))

No according to lore and common sense this "we" you talk about doesnt exist. There is only the one player character ressurrected in the beginning of the game and that is the exact same one you and I are both playing. Your character and my character do not actually coexist in the same world. How the rest of the guardians both named and unnamed became guardians is completely unknown to me though.

Yes and no. Even if a guardian wasn't revived by a ghost, one of the biggest things a ghost is there for is... respawn. It's like they were intentionally made as a plot device to explain why, in an FPS game, your character can come back to life. So not all guardians were brought back to life initially, but eventually they do die and come back to life. Destiny takes a lot of things from differing mythologies. I think ghosts are like valkyries in Norse mythology. They revive fallen warriors to become einherjar to fight in a predestined war. Just like that, ghosts revive fallen warriors to become guardians to eventually fight in a way against the darkness. So it's not really taken out of a page of a zombie book. More like mythology.