Mass Effect Character Importing

[Staple2]

After a somewhat disappointing first playthrough of Mass Effect some years ago, I gave it another go and it was so inspiring I feel like going through it again. And again. Of course I'll be going through it with ME2 and, eventually, 3 in mind, so I'd like to amass a pool of characters for this.

How does the character importing work? Does it only do decisions or class as well? For example, if I import my Soldier will it only import what decisions I made or will I have to play as a soldier in ME2 as well? Is there any way to only import decisions?

The second thing is, if the answer to class importing is yes, how exactly does that work? In ME1 if you had one playthrough as a Biotic and one as a Soldier, you can pick additional abilities from those trees if you play, let's say a Vanguard. I assume you also only unlock this after a playthrough with one of the base classes on ME2, so if I want to import a hypothetical Vanguard, after having played through as both soldier and biotic on ME1, will it still be vanilla Van in ME2 or will I have the option to pick the additional abilities?

[Iam3G]

AFAIK, the import is only for decisions. In ME2 you still get to choose a new class, but with the decisions of the ME1 playthrough.

I think the additional abilities come in after you finish a playthrough of ME2 once. (I stand to be corrected, haven't played in a while).

[Crzwaco]

In mass effect 2 you import your dicisions you can then pick your class you want to play it as.

There is a dlc called "Genesis" that I still want to get where you can" The 15 minute interactive experience allows you to make the key choices of Mass Effect 1. This retelling will also let you have those choices reflected during Mass Effect 2."

[Staple2]

Awesome, thanks. Was just wondering if I, say, woke up one day and decided to play an Engineer on ME2 whether or not I needed Engineer playthrough on ME1 for those decisions to reflect. Thanks guys.

[Iam3G]

I still need to do 1 more playthrough for ME1 for the rest of the achievements. But I borrowed it to my buddy and i have NO idea when I'll be getting it back :/

[Staple2]

lol yeah I'm also in the process of achievement hunting. Those ally achievements are bitches though.

[Sgt]

I have finished Mass Effect three time ad ME2 two times. I think it is one of the most awesome RPG ever. The way the decisions in ME goes over to ME2 was well done.

That you could keep your choices from ME and have a new class in ME2 was very cool cause I was tired of plying soldier. XD

[Staple2]

One more question, what side quests have an impact on ME2?

[ViperGTI]

They don't have major impact on ME2, although, I'm hoping that the impact will be more severe in ME3 since it will be the last installment. (Especially saving / killing Rachni, the results of Bring down the sky DLC, etc.)

You can get detailed information about what is being transferred (thus what the effect will be), at http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Save_File_Transfer

[souluser7]

I dunno about this, I personally just like to stick to the default Shephard character because I don't want to hassle too much with character selection and I want it to be a continuation of the story with the character that I've been playing with for the past two games in the series.