Honestly I don't think anyone before thought that Daisy was a real person either. All the theories were that she was a vision constructed by the tadpole or some other party, but no one thought she was a real person. Daisy was, as far as we could tell in Act 1, fulfilling the same role as the guardian. The scene where we were saved from the fall played out the same, she said are was protecting us from... something. Daisy might have suited some people's tastes better, but I don't believe she was going to function substantively different from the guardian in terms of her role within the story.