I think it will release. If they redirected most of the resources to it (which seems to be the case), then they may actually finalise it, just to get it out of the door, because the investors demanded it (my speculation).
What quality will it be is anyone's guess tho
Personally I'd love for it to be a good game, because I paid for it 13 years ago and we don't particularly have many single player sci-fi FPS adventure games tbh.
I mean, they could also "release" SC right now, and be done with it ("release" as in leaving early access). So yeah, I am pretty sure they can release "something" and call it SQ42.
I think the gist of it is that many believe SQ42 would be as bad if not worst than the current SC state. And, if that is correct, I suspect Chris Roberts (asuming he is still in charge and not overridden by the Calders or someone else) will not release that.
Given SC early access seems to allegedly be working so well commercially I suspect CIG may be also considering releasing SQ42 in some form of early access, say a prelude, like a single mission or couple missions (tutorial and first mission etc) or some such very limited partial thing. And given it would be in early access CIG could explain why the thing is still broken.
If it was a regular release that "prelude" would really
need to be extremely good and superpolished, otherwise the reviews would destroy it (just a mission and broken?! After a billion dollars and 15 years?!). If there is any chance this is not really achievable I suspect they would not release even that. And if it was just "meh" it may not produce the sales needed for the long term.
Much easier to just continue extracting money with an eternal early access until everyone forgets and the thing dies of old age. Pretty sure Chris Roberts has already started planning his exit strategy in some gracious form (health/family priorities, age/retiring, leaving SC in "good hands" etc etc etc).
