Hi everyone. I found Oblivion to be annoyingly unplayable with the "go here, speak to this guy" arrows and handholding mechanisms, and it seems to be the same in Skyrim. I don't mind getting lost in a game, to me that's not wasting time, finding my way IS gameplay. And it means I'll accidentally find more stuff. Sometimes it seems to me the game is simply telling me what to do, rather than me doing it for myself.

Anyway

As it is, currently I'm reduced to ignoring the plot entirely and just wandering around doing the other stuff. I was never more happier than when an Oblivion mod took away those arrows and pointers, I wonder if I might see a similar mod for Skyrim?

You can disable the quest markers. Just open your journal and you should be able to select the entries to show. This won't disable the map icons/compass, but I don't mind these (I simply ignore them) - and they're not THAT bad, considering you can't really concentrate on learning all locations or directions as you have other (RL) stuff to concentrate on and remember, too.

Check your SkyrimPrefs.ini the sections GamePlay and Interface have what you want.

Okaydokes I will look at those suggestions, thanks for the quick responses

Just open SkyrimPrefs.ini and make sure these lines are right

bShowCompass=0
bShowFloatingQuestMarkers=0
bShowQuestMarkers=0