The recent posting of the Destiny Plot Summary reminded me of a scene that I had forgotten. The very first mission, in which you have done nothing remarkable yet, the Stranger is observing you. Which begs the question, are you inherently worth watching, or is your ghost worth watching?

My feeling is that it's not our ghost, not unless there is a sort of Merlin prophecy surrounding our ghost where one day he is destined to find "The one that saves the universe". That would be hokey. The only other explanation would be if our ghost were a sort of badass. While Ghost can certainly hack things, he is markedly timid. Always questioning whether something is a good idea, and generally being unsure of himself.

That sort of leaves us as the special one. As the primary protagonist, it would make sense that we were special. But do we have any evidence for why the Stranger would think we'd be special prior to us being found by our ghost? The only evidence I can find for this would be in a Cabal Grimoire card, a story told by a different ghost:

"I thought Mars would be the place to find a Guardian. The sand preserves everything well, and Clovis Bray had been famous for attracting talent. The brave, the brilliant, the footloose, those restless on Earth and itching for fame."

This would imply that not just any dead person will do, which makes sense else the ghosts would just pick someone from within the city walls that had died.

I also do not think it's because of our pure skills, or potential for skill. We can't hardly die with our ghosts around, and an army of Guardians would be insane. No one really shows amazement at our feats. Power is not an issue.

Personal theory: It could be that the Stranger or those she represents are aware of who we used to be. Maybe we were one of them? A badass ghost-less warrior in a previous life would only stand to be more powerful with a ghost. My theory then is that it's our attitude that they're after. We might not be as timid as those guardians before us, but would be a guardian that wants to live life on the edge as the Stranger does.

An Aside: There is a conflict here though. The Stranger appears to be fighting the same war as the Guardians, but they are doing so in a way that those at The Tower must not approve of, else they'd be more buddy-buddy. Since the Guardians "willing gave up the moon" to appease the Hive, it could be that the Guardians represent the passive pansies, and those with the Stranger are the aggressive warriors.

Back to that of attitude vs power, this could be why the Stranger waited until we had done something rather different (gone to the moon) before revealing herself. Yet still she asked us to go even further away from our walls to meet her. She could have met us on the Moon after we completed our quest, but instead the final "test" was to travel to a planet we hadn't been to before. Meanwhile, our ghost is being quite the pansy, asking us if we know what we're doing. Our character has quite the "why the hell not?!" attitude, strikingly similar to our Stranger friend and apparently rather different than those Guardians before us.

To drop an analogy, perhaps the Guardians are the Jedi equivalent, beaten, hiding, and scared, while the Stranger is the rebel forces. Not so singularly powerful but willing to keep taking the fight to the enemy.

Does anyone have any information for or against that theory?