Torment: Tides of Numenera - Interview @ Penny Arcade

The Penny Arcade Report has an interview with the leads for this project, Kevin Saunders
and Colin Mccomb who took a great risk in their careers:

Saunders was a contractor whose job was to get the project off the ground. During that time he received another job offer, and brought it to Fargo to see if inXile could match it. He was told it was dependent on the success of the Kickstarter. The worst case scenario is that he could continue on through the month for health insurance. The best case scenario was that the Kickstarter was funded and he'd get the chance to work on the spiritual successor to one of the best-loved role-playing games of all time. He decided to stay on.

Colin McComb has this to say about the market for Torment: Tides of Numenera versus
the market for say the Dragon Age games.

We have a different audience. I don't want to make generalizations about the target metric and age for Dragon Age, but ours is hearkening back to a more philosophical, story-driven thing. All respect to the guys at Bioware, because I mean no disrespect, but I think that people are looking for a really reactive, really involved storyline that they have some control over, rather than just an interactive movie with player-controllable combat. "Our market, people who are passionate about this type of game, is smaller than is of interest to big publishers.