I may be paraphrasing incorrectly, in that they may not be playable.

I'll gladly speculate, though, which is more sort of a fevered daydream.

Suppose certain things from the first game - the battle on Eden Prime, Noveria, Feros, talking with your squad, so on and so forth - was done by taking model and sound assets from the first game and applying them to the second game's engine? So you'd play through the batle of Eden Prime, only it's a Mass Effect 2 level.

That

That could be pretty neat

*Spolier Alert*

It was pretty easy to NOT save Wrex: if your persuade skills (forget what they were called...) weren't high enough either way, I think he would fight you and you'd have to kill him, right?  Or maybe I'm not remembering that part all that great.  I remember thinking I had to choose my blue responses all the way, to keep him a member of the team.

Additionally, Ashley plays almost no part in ME2 whatsoever, or at least her part is very small. 

TBH, reagrding Ashley, I felt a brief twinge of infidelity when I started hitting on Miranda.  After that initial second though, I was fine...

Well, we don't need to worry about labeling spoilers for the first game: it's about three years old, now.

You can also hae Wrex live if you do his personal sidequest and get his family armor, in which case he'll agree with you and go along with your plan if you go paragon on him (you don't need any persuade skills). Otherwise you need a lot of either Charm or Intimidate, yes.

As to romances

Yeeeeeeeah I stayed loyal to Liara on my main Shepard

Yeah, that's basically what I was thinking. They couldn't be really long or tough, though, since they still have to worry about the pacing of the first part of the game.

But doing it like that would open some very interesting possibilities, gameplay- and storywise.

Miranda's ass

What are the BIG decisions in ME1?  Anyone know for sure?

I remember the Rachni queen decision, the Ashley/Kaidan decision, the council, Wrex...  my memory stinks, what else was there?

Personally I thought ME1 was a better RPG then ME2, but ME2 is a better shooter.  I liked them both, very much.

Killing/sparing the civilians on the Thorian planet, choosing between Udina and Anderson to name the biggest political gun of humanity, aaaaaaaaaaaand probably the DLC choices. And possibly your background.

Beyond those, I don't think there was anything THAT important.

EDIT: Yeah, missed the Asari Commando and the scientist, I knew I forgot something.

The rachni decision, Wrex, the council, your general paragon/renegade-ness, Virmire, whether your saved the colonists on Feros, whether you let Shiala live, whether you let the scientist on Virmire live.... those are the biggest ones, I think.

I played it on Computer

Really The Characters I liked a lot were

Liara ((my favorite) I'm excited for the new dlc)
Legion
Morinth

Bioware's created 4/6 of my favorite characters this gen.

I really enjoyed the last mission. One of my favorite missions ever in a videogame. If the whole game was structured this way. it would probably be my favorite videogame ever.

However. I thought the music was worse in Mass Effect  (as it's probably one of my favorite soundtracks ever). It was fine and not annoying. it just lacked the umph imo.

The biggest problem I had. Was it felt like a bunch of side quests. With a few main story missions sprinkled in. However, everything was done so well. It was still a blast.

I thought it was less of a "rpg" than the first one, but a much better, much more polished game... especially the gameplay/graphics. imo

Is there any point in playing ME2 if you haven't played ME1? I'm a bit of a story whore when theres a good one there.