I have to agree, Skyrim was overwhelming at first. They kept piling the side quests on top of each other and so you really had to persevere to complete them all.
That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy finishing them but I felt like they could've spaced them out while progressing through the main storyline. Having it so that you could only visit/start the Companions/Thieves Guild etc, while playing the main storyline would've been exactly what the game needed to stop scaring new players off the series with the sheer number of quests.
Aekom's comments