Squadmate Personalities

Would love a female Zaeed. Would've been perfect if she was an Asari...

where ME1>3 were predominantly older middle aged leader based I'm hoping that ME:A will be predominantly based on teen/early twenties youthful exuberance and quirks, so a complete change of interactive personalities will suit well

A volus with a death wish
A krogan who is a chicken
A bad ass Quarian
A Deep thinking literature loving batarian
A Turian that really is a drunk
A Salarian that likes heavy weapons.
An Asari that looks like the hamburglar and runs like Charley Chaplain.

I would think that an older crew would be less of a rehash considering how frequently the characters in the original series (and BioWare games in general) tended towards melodrama nearing highschool sophistication. BioWare as entity has been gradually approaching the center of the over-the-top black hole that is Anime. If we're ever going to handle serious issues like colonization and the prime directive, I would hope that the individuals participating in those issues aren't a bunch of hormonal teens or moralizing college grads.

I hope against reason that we get a collection of characters that conflict with each other not because they're volatile youths, but because they hold incompatible moral standpoints. There's no reason to artificially inflate good conflict with cheap drama if the crux of the matter is genuinely interesting.

Do you really want an old man or woman who tries to fit in with the young crowd to  be hip

You do realize that you can have an old person that is not just crotchety or insecure about their age right? In fact, considering old people are just regular adults with more backstory and less physical ability (though it's not like those traits are guaranteed in a sci-fi game) , I'd think that it would be just as easy to make them not a stereotype.

 
Ah good old Mordin, the Salarian William Shatner.

Zaeed being stereotypical enhanced him as a character.

He's the cool alpha male Uncle with badAZZ stories.

I don't think that's true though. Mass Effect had Kaiden, Ashley, Wrex, Garrus, Tali, and Liara, so 2/5 of our crew are completely inexperienced in combat, and I wouldn't exactly describe Kaiden and Ashley as "hardened veterans," specifically (they're not completely numb to violence). For a military operation, I'd think that was a more than reasonable combat experience distribution.

Mass Effect 2 was all over the place in terms of psychological age. In fact, imagining a game with a wider and/or younger distribution doesn't appeal to me at all. I'm one of the few people who will gladly defend Mass Effect 2 against criticisms of "daddy issues" (to a degree), but there is a point where I'm not going to bother any more. BioWare have already dug themselves deeply enough into this whole "teenage drama" mess; going further won't really help them out.

Mass Effect 3 had possibly the most hardened crew of all the games, and honestly, I thought the character interactions in it were the best in the series. It was obviously quite sentimental, but the depth of character traits explored was far greater than most of the personal conflicts of its predecessors. 

Call me crazy, but I'm not  particularly exactly excited by the prospect of enduring more than a coupe virginal experiences with combat. I can get behind having a greenhorn on our squad, but I bet it'll just be the same old "newbie" story we've already heard over and over again: eager recruit sees the horrors of combat and either becomes numb, leaves, or overcomes it. While that's not a bad setup, and clearly, the quality of narrative comes down to a number of factors beyond the surface level, it's still a story I've heard over and over.