Mass Effect 2 - Preview @ RPS

John Walker takes a look at Mass Effect 2 for Rock, Paper, Shotgun.  Here's a bit on exactly what importing a save will offer:

You play as Shepard. There, it’s out. He/she’s not dead (for the sake of this article I’m going to call Shepard a “she”, since the One True Shepard (my one) was). Quite why there was all that promotional material saying she was remains a mystery, and one that will presumably be resolved when the game appears. But this of course means we have an answer to the questions about whether your Mass Effect 1 character carries over.

It very much does. And more than you might imagine. Traditionally giant compromises have had to be made when letting you pick up the same character in a later game. BioWare promises this time will be quite strikingly different. When you import your save game, you’ll not only bring across the look of your Shepard, but also all the decisions, actions and relationships she formed. This seems an enormous task, meaning their stories for the recurring characters will have to have multiple beginnings each, to match up to however they might have ended in the previous game. Oh, and of course if you killed that character, they won’t show up at all. It’s tempting to suspect this means the roles of previous characters will have to be somewhat diminished, if the story is to survive their complete absence. BioWare made it clear that having played the original game was not necessary, and apparently the sequel will still work as an entry point for new players.