That was my first thought when I saw it but I believe Bioware will have this planned for ME2. The council sends you and your crew on a secret mission. Now you can choose to load up a save file from Mass Effect and it loads up all your gear and Skills. So you play this mission for a good 2-3 hours before you finish it. As you finish it you get ambushed by Geth Shepard gets separated from the crew takes a escape pod which takes him outside the Veil into Geth Territory. No one goes outside the Veil in which the Council thinks he is dead. Sheppard is not dead but crashed landed on a uncharted planet. Where you get healed up and fixed up by this sentient species. At this point it brings you to a Facial reconstruction. Now you start out the game level 1 because you forget your skills. Boom what do you think? Maybe a certain someone on here can ask his contact and see how close I am
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/02/23/bioware-keep-your-original-mass-effect-saves/ Bioware says to keep your original mass effect saves. This will probably be how Bioware makes the transition from last game to this one, based on the choices you made in the last game.
probably just starts you off with a generic opening then that will cover all the bases. I mean only two specific things happened, and its possible that they'll avoid both of them in the sequel just to avoid consistency issues.
haha imagine: someone who has never played mass effect 1, buys 2 and plugs it in. the screen fades in from black and it goes through one of those cool 'freak out' Reaper sequences and then Sovereign comes through and says "foolish mortal, you must first face me before you face this trial", and the game cuts to black, showing a link to an online order form for Mass Effect 1 from Circuit C--errr--- Best Buy. that would KICK ***.