Mass Effect 2 Preview

Kotaku's PAX coverage includes a quick look at Mass Effect 2, though the article pretty much sums up what we don't know about the game rather than what we do know. The little we don't know, snipped:
So, Walters will talk about how BioWare is writing the new game differently: On the first game, Walters was a senior writer focusing on the characters Wrex and Garrus as well as several quests. He said the writing team for the second game has been working to make dialogue more conversational and, with the benefit of a larger cinematics team involved in this project, they are attempting to craft more of the conversations as scenes rather than just moments of characters saying what they need the player to know.

But Walters won't talk about who is in the game, besides Shepard: "A lot of the main characters you're going to see them if they're alive," he said. "You can expect to see cameos, return appearances by some people. Your decisions from the first game will matter. If, for some reason, they're dead, they're not going to come back. We listened to our fans and realized some of the characters in the sidequests are really popular. Well, we're bringing them back so you'll sometimes see the return of some of the fan favorites." That says something. But it doesn't exactly name names.