They originally had intended for you to be capable of importing your old Arena characters into Daggerfall, though this was scrapped when the skill system we've come to know and love was proven too intricate compared to the system in the original. Still, I wonder if some sort of alternate backstory or modified quest line would've been used if you decided to play as your Eternal Champion.
I'm not sure if we can rely use "original intentions" as evidence, I mean if you look at the original plans for Morrowind or Arena they're fairly different games. In fact sometime after Daggerfall's release one of the devs gave us an unofficial overview of the next three games:
TES III Mournhold, which wasn't terribly different from the eventual game, at least from a story stand point
TES IV Oblivion, which took place on Sumerset Isle
TES V, which involved a massive civil war after the fall of the Empire
:)
We don't know what happened to *any* of the game's heroes, except for Cyrus. All the heroes just disappear when they have fulfilled their role. Septim's agent survived in 5/6 endings, so he could theoretically still be alive somewhere.
I think it's best this way, otherwise they need to have a canonical hero for each game, but no one would have actually
played that canonical hero.
^Really so Bethesda was going to do something like that 10 years ago that other developers are just starting to grasp today, they must have been more ambitious back then.
It was actually more common back then.
Importing characters through a series, that is. Floppies made it easy. It was the CD that killed it.
SSI's Stone Prophet allowed you to import characters from Strahd's Possession, and Wake of the Ravager allowed you to import characters from Shattered Lands. I could be wrong but I believe both sequels were available on CDs from the get go.
This isn't to say that CD didn't have an impact, but there were other factors as well. It used to be easier to release successive games on the same basic engine, something that doesn't really happen any more. While its true that the engine shouldn't matter providing the character system remains the same I think new engines tend to lend themselves to revamped character systems. Also, as developement requirements increase for games it becomes more difficult to include a feature that allows the player to start off at high levels (even if their gear is all removed).