Here my perdiction on the plot for Mass Effect 3:
 

• It will be a race against the clock, as in you only get to do a hand full of mission before you have to lauch the attack against the reapers. 

• Mission wise you be gathering up an army to fight reaper eg the council, the Quarian fleet, the geth, the Rachni and the Krogan.

• Who'll be with you, At least one that surived mass effect 2 and Liara or Kaiden/Ashley and thats all I don't see bioware adding more team members when there a huge list already. Here
  

Some fair predictions. I'm very much inclined to agree with you on the third point you made, Mass Effect 2 was largely about laying out who each of the characters were, and with the story coming to it's climax I don't see them trying to introduce any new characters at this point.

...the trailer shows that the Reapers are already attacking Earth. 
 
That means Shepard only has a few days to save them, how is Shepard going to travel the galaxy in a few days to get everyone ready?  Even if he could move as fast as light, it still wouldn't count for the vast distances.

Final moral choice will be either: Save most of humanity, but the planet is pretty much killed and vice versa, or Save most of Humanity, but your alien allies suffer heavy losses and vice versa.

I bet you'll die in the end.

 
i'm joining the reapers or taking over the universe, been my plan since ME1. 
my shepard never was good. 

Shepard was revived with reaper tech from Sovereign. 

I hope you're wrong about the clock thing... I HATE being rushed in my RPGs.

" Final moral choice will be either: Save most of humanity, but the planet is pretty much killed and vice versa, or Save most of Humanity, but your alien allies suffer heavy losses and vice versa. "

" I hope you're wrong about the clock thing... I HATE being rushed in my RPGs. "

i bet 3 or 4 player co op story.

I can't see there being a mission limit / timer of any kind tbh, because it isn't the 90s.  I expect the structure to be along the lines of 'There are 4 conflicts between possible allies that need resolving (Geth vs. Quarian etc.), choose who you want to help and they'll show up in the last cutscene!'.  Then the last choice will be save Earth or sacrifice it to save the galaxy.  I hope they have something more imaginative in mind, but it seems likely.
 
The only way they'll bring back potentially-dead-team-members (except maybe Kaiden/Ashley and Legion) is if team mates are super marginalized in ME3.  It's less work for them to come up with new characters than make content for people that might not even be alive.  Tbh, letting the team-mates take a back seat (ie. use the full roster, but don't have any party member side missions) so they can focus entirely on the main storyline might be the best thing they could do.  They could whittle down your roster depending on the choices you make - ie. Tali will fight you / leave if you side with the Geth, Legion if you side with the Quarians etc.

I think the big choice will be either
 
Paragon:  The galaxy is  damaged by the Reapers, but united,  and Humanity no longer has the advantages it did in the Citadel; but at least the galaxy is saved and can continue on.
 
Renegade: Fuck the Citadel, humans rule now. 
 
 
Also I am thinking Wrex might actually help out now by leading the krogan. And I am a-okay with that.

"

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I swear to god, if they put some sort of stupid time restraint in order to save earth i'm going to murder somebody. It just makes me think of Fable 3 and how much the king part sucked because of that.

" ...the trailer shows that the Reapers are already attacking Earth.  That means Shepard only has a few days to save them, how is Shepard going to travel the galaxy in a few days to get everyone ready?  Even if he could move as fast as light, it still wouldn't count for the vast distances. "

"

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" @CptChiken said:

" I hope you're wrong about the clock thing... I HATE being rushed in my RPGs. "

...you'll hate Majora's Mask. "

" ...the trailer shows that the Reapers are already attacking Earth.  That means Shepard only has a few days to save them, how is Shepard going to travel the galaxy in a few days to get everyone ready?  Even if he could move as fast as light, it still wouldn't count for the vast distances. "  

Yep, that'll be it I think.

I'm calling having to work out peace between the Quarians and the Geth so you can have both armies fighting for you.

 Here is my prediction on the plot for Mass Effect 3:
 
* You will be able to take your sweet time doing things because people will whine if they can't see all the content they want to in a single sitting. Any and all time limits will be explicitly telegraphed (i.e. SHEPARD WE MUST GO NOW OR SOMETHING BAD WILL HAPPEN).
* Mission wise you will be rehashing Dragon Age and 30 other RPG's that centered on gathering an army to defeat a big bad. It will consist of you going up to factions, the factions saying "Sorry, we'd love to help, but we have internal problem X and we won't help you until it's solved." You will then solve the problem, and they will come into your big merry band. They also won't help you until the end.   
* The characters from ME2 will be the party members of yours in ME3, with perhaps 2 or 3 not included (Thane has a terminal condition, Mordin is extremely old for a Salarian and should be dying shortly), because if they don't, then the entire ME2 was a huge fat waste of time. THE ONLY THING YOU DID IN THAT GAME WAS BUILD A TEAM. We learned one minor thing about the Reapers, and aside from gathering your squad, the plog was NOT progressed at all. If they fail to use the team from ME2, it will be a spectacularly bad decision. 
 
Structurally re-using the team is not a problem. The game kills off Shepard if there are less than 2 squadmates alive at the end of the suicide mission, and most people lost (at most ) 1 or 2 squadmates. Ergo, every player must have AT LEAST two team members alive for ME3, and if they supplement that with 1 or 2 others that's fine as a punishment for players getting everybody killed. Bioware has already stated that if Shepard died in ME2, you WILL NOT be able to import your save into ME3 (it even says that in ME2...)

" ...the trailer shows that the Reapers are already attacking Earth.  That means Shepard only has a few days to save them, how is Shepard going to travel the galaxy in a few days to get everyone ready?  Even if he could move as fast as light, it still wouldn't count for the vast distances. "

" @KaosAngel: But in Majora's Mask you constantly rewind events. In Mass effect time is linear "

Please no more recruiting. I don't want to gather a squad. I don't want to gather armies. Please give us an interesting plot where, you know, exciting shit happens.

We already know there is at least one new character: the unnamed guy on Earth whose voice we hear in the trailer. :)  You know, I already like him and I've seen him for, what, just one minute?
 
ME2 had the one time-related decision at the end, where we were forced to skip one mission if we wanted to save the entire Normandy crew. I wasn't a big fan of having to do that. I doubt there will be a huge press for time--pressuring players to play less of the game to get the best ending seems counterproductive from a game-design perspective. I think that we'll be forced to make some difficult decision as to who to take with us on the mission, or faced with irreconcilable conflicts that will lead us to compromise how we resolve certain tense situations (like between the Geth and Quarians). Time, though, I hope is not going to be an issue.
 
As for the crew, there are just too many ways for Bioware to go on that. I doubt there will be new characters. What I'd like is to be able to choose from the entire cast maybe four or five that I really want with me, then send the rest out on other missions throughout the galaxy. Now that would be a difficult decision, picking between those whose stories I want to see to the end in contrast with their skills and abilities. It would make for great replayability. But it would also seem to make Bioware's work far more difficult. So who knows.

Magical space artifact will kill/deactivate all the Reapers instantaneously. How else would it work out, Shepard personally fights each and every single one? Don't think so. And we've seen how successful the galactic military is at fighting them (not very).  
 
@KaosAngel said:

" ...the trailer shows that the Reapers are already attacking Earth.  That means Shepard only has a few days to save them, how is Shepard going to travel the galaxy in a few days to get everyone ready?  Even if he could move as fast as light, it still wouldn't count for the vast distances. "

Mass Relay travel is nearly instantaneous across arbitrary distances (See; Omega 4 jump takes seconds). The conventional FTL travel in Mass Effect (the "fly anywhere" kind not dependant on relays) is on the order of ~5600 times the speed of light based on the Codex figure of "12 lightyears per day".

In terms of squad mates, I can easily see Bioware pulling a fast one and have most of your mass effect 2 squad opt to stay behind on Earth's battlefield while you try to gather up an army and more squadmates for your mass effect 3 team.

I'm guessing that it is going to very much like Dragon Age but with you going to the home worlds of each race, Maybe the missions would be a bit easier depending on your past decisions? 
Also for all you paragon guys.

" Here my perdiction on the plot for Mass Effect 3:
 

• It will be a race against the clock, as in you only get to do a hand full of mission before you have to lauch the attack against the reapers. 

• Mission wise you be gathering up an army to fight reaper eg the council, the Quarian fleet, the geth, the Rachni and the Krogan.

• Who'll be with you, At least one that surived mass effect 2 and Liara or Kaiden/Ashley and thats all I don't see bioware adding more team members when there a huge list already.

 Feel free to add your prediction on the plot. "

I thing i need to clarify my third point 
What I mean is If one or more of your team surived on the suicide mission will be back in the Mass Effect 3.
 

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Yeah, this is totally going to be a game about gathering up enemy races. 
 
I actually assume we'll just have new team members and we'll simply run in to the old ones (ME1, ME2) when we go to recruit their race to help defend humanity.  Heck, maybe it will be like Shadow Broker where you have a default teammate assigned.

What if the whole earth thing is just one part of a major conflict? What if the final choice is to save a certain race's home planet? Whatever the story is i'm 99% sure that i'm going to buy this.

It seams the author of this forum thinks that people HAVE and will inevitable die on the suicide mission. If you have a good save you will have you entire crew with you! If you have a bad save some of your crew will be dead! But I find an alliance with the Geth very believable, seeing as none of them are Heretics. So... just like the elites in Halo, the biggest most bad-ass looking enemies will team up to help Shepard.

Will there be an actually compelling story?

Color me pissed if this is another recruiting game. The trailer made it seem so.

• Recruitment will be based on species that will support humanity's fight against the Reapers.  Example - Wrex will be on your team and he is representative of the Krograns.  Piss him off, and Krograns won't help.  Keep him happy, and Krogans will charge at the Reapers head first with shotguns.
• Reapers will attack Earth and the Citadel.  You have to choose between either saving humans or the governing collective of species.  Humans will end up either being martyrs or the new leaders of whoever is left in the universe.
• If you cheated on Ashley/Kaiden, then it will be brought up in ME3.

Go through a few hour intro
Get sent to do 3 clearly defined tasks 
One of them will have complications/there will be a surprise 4th task
Exposition
Final Boss
Roll Credits
 
/Bioware

" Go through a few hour intro Get sent to do 3 clearly defined tasks  One of them will have complications/there will be a surprise 4th task Exposition Final Boss Roll Credits  /Bioware "