So it turned out to be a
Mass Effect 3 trailer and not a new series as many had speculated. Neato!
Holiday 2011 though...yeah, I'm not expecting them to keep that due date. Bioware already has a big enough year with
Dragon Age 2 and
The Old Republic (and I expect
TOR will be a little buggy, especially considering it is an MMO), so I strongly suspect
ME: 3 will be pushed back to Q1 2012. Still, that's a faster turn-over than
MS: 1 to
MS: 2 (admittedly, MS: 2 was strongly redesigned, so a larger turn-over was expected)...
Spoiler for potential character spoilers...:
As for carry-over characters: Jack, Tali, Mordin and Legion (Legion and Jack could potentially be replaced with like-minded characters (ala Wrex and Grunt, Ashley and Miranda, Liara and Samara, etc), but I like Jack's personality too much, and I want to see more geth and quarian interactions), with Ashley/Kaiden coming back (I was hoping for a Shadow Broker level comparable DLC for the surviving crew member, but I guess Bioware just wanted to get to the new game), Liara having a more active role in the main story (maybe even one of your group), and a few new characters would be nice.