Skyrim – Playing Past the Final Quest

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Bethesda games, sadly, have been going downhill with respect to playing past the ending quest:

In Oblivion, you could play past the game's ending and even got a special piece of armor from it.
In Fallout 3, you couldn't play past the ending without buying the Broken Steel DLC.
In Fallout: New Vegas, you couldn't play past the ending. Period.

How does Skyrim handle the ending mission in this respect?

Quoting developer Todd Howard:

"When you finish the main quest you’ll be able to continue playing.”

And in reponse to if Skyrim's ending will be like Fallout 3, where you had to buy DLC:

"No, that was a mistake."