That could actually be a difficulty toggle thing. People complain all the time about playing on a higher difficulty only affecting enemy strength and player health, well this is a perfect thing to change with the difficulty. The amount of info/the ease of finding locations.
I remembered, it was Dragon Age: Origins. When I noticed that in the settings, I was like "For real? Awesome!" and disabled the help. If I think about it, it's not even hard to manage, I mean making it optional.
–- Update From New Post Merge ---
I'm still looking for the GOTY PC edition somewhere. My first experience with the regular version was hilarious though. 'Okay. I just need to deliver this item. Okay, here I am, and….....I think I may have sold the item somewhere by accident. Well.....shi*.'
Haha, happened to me as well.
My first experience in Vivec was memorable "Where the hell am I? Where do I go? Where are the guilds? How do I go there?".