Differently from other games where the whereabouts of protagonists can later be developed and the characters make their way into part of the story (D1 and D2 characters coming back for example), I don’t think this would work for Grim Dawn.
The Taken is unique, he is not a band of heroes (like in D2) that have their classes already predetermined, their own stories and were able to make their own choices between games, contributing to the world building and lore.
The Taken is a powerful being and his presence alone in the events of GD2 would create an unbalance in the story, even more if he’s not the protagonist; this would create a lot of confusion about his powers, his canon mastery, etc.
Afraid of dealing with this kind of stuff, D4 devs totally ignored and retconned the Nephalem from D3 and this unique and powerful being is not even mentioned because, as I said before, it raises more questions and it’s hard to build up from there.
So, my idea is: Let the Taken be the protagonist of GD2. Have him lose his powers doing to losing his connection to the aether and start from the bottom. Like God of War 2 and 3 (and other games) did, so they wouldn’t need to constantly power creep the protagonist. That way, they were able to increase Kratos’ powers compared to the previous game but not by a very long margin, maintaining the player’s feeling of accomplishment and progression.
You won’t need to fill the gaps and create a canon mastery for the Taken or anything of the sorts. Have the dialog options state that he was very powerful but that now he is building his power from the bottom again, this time without the connection to the aether as a “cheat code” and actually even choosing different powers than before.
Take this with a big scoop of salt since nothing about a sequel is set in stone, but my headcanon for future events involves the Taken showing up as an almost mythical figure your character would hear about and possibly meet as the human resistance pushes deeper into Erulan. Picture them filling a similar role to Ulgrim, a powerful ally doing their part out there.
But…isn’t Taken different per character?
How you define, how he/she would look like, if everyone Taken is different?
Or you just take the character from the starting cutscene?
