Did the game still need work done to it? I assume most of the game had been completed prior to the bankruptcy?

It wasn’t completed, but it was close to completion, and only the developers would truly know how close it actually was. What I do know is that playable alpha review copies were sent out to gaming magazines in 2008. For example, IGN published a “hands-on” article about it at the time.

(As a side note: Sergey Makeev, now best known for his work on Roblox, released the source code for the Captain Blood game engine under the GPLv3 license in 2022. It’s still available for download on GitHub.)

It's nice that original code is out under GPLv3: https://github.com/storm-devs/captain-blood

But I'm pretty sure GOG's release is using newer code, since it has a Vulkan renderer and I don't see it in the above repo. Shouldn't they release the updated source if the original is under GPL already?

Bioshock says Hi
And, frankly, with some historical games politics is going to rear it's ugly head.
and starting with GTA !V, that exremely popular series had some social commentary.

Humans are inherently social and political animals, everything we do is political to some extent. Games, like all forms of art and media, carry implicit or explicit messages that reflect the ideologies, assumptions, and values of their creators. The real issue often isn’t whether a game is political, but whether it expresses politics you agree with - which you may not even notice, or politics you disagree with - which can feel intrusive or annoying. So when people criticize a game for being “too political,” what they usually mean is that it presents a worldview they don’t personally agree with.