Vythonaut: Sounds good, but at the same time it's a shame if they held the better stuff in order to make more money via the DLC route. I'm not in good terms with that practice, especially when i pay full price for a game (as I did for MEs), so i guess the only way to buy these DLCs would be for them to appear bundled with a ME collection. A GOG version no less.
Speaking of DLCs, there have been times when i was offered with special codes that enabled various stuff in-game (Dragon Age: Origins comes to mind; something about a stone golem or something), but i didn't even use them. In fact, i used to throw these flyers away - that is, when i was still buying retail.
Oh that, if we're talking about the same thing, is a complete deal-breaker for me. I hate seeing something in a game, but not being able to interact with it because I need to purchase access. The reason simply being that it takes me out of the moment. I.e. it's totally immersion breaking for me.
The way the ME dlcs work that I looked at are either new dialog options or new npcs that trigger quest lines. That's ok, unless of course as you say it's content that was held back to be sold afterwards. I don't imagine that's the case however.
The sidequests in ME1 weren't that bad though. They just needed more variation. Each surface base, underground base, mine and spaceship was essentially the same. This was fixed in ME2 of course, but I thought they could've done a little bit more to keep it from feeling so inconsequential. E.g. the saved quarian from the one side quest could've later showed up at Tali's trail, or something like that.
OT, technically not playing 'right now' (still deciding on next game), but have some images from Sol in ME2. Never got the Uranus probe easter egg though :(