Torment: Tides of Numenera won't release this year as previously indicated, studio inXile has announced. The Kickstarter-funded RPG, which was initially announced in 2013, will launch in early 2017 allowing time for localization and general polish.

In the Kickstarter update studio head Brian Fargo explained the reasoning behind the delay, pointing to the game's one million words of text as the most pressing challenge. The studio is working with an unannounced publisher to translate that massive slab of text.

"All said and done, our combined iteration and localization efforts are looking to be a 6-month process," Fargo wrote. "So, we have two paths open to us, a bit of choice and consequence, if you will. Those of you who have been following our updates know we have been hinting towards a late 2016 release, and we could crunch and rush to get the game out around November.

"But doing so would mean both sacrificing the quality of our localization and would lead to a less polished game for the nearly 100,000 people total who have backed the game. Therefore, in the interests of giving everyone the best experience, we will be releasing Torment in early Q1 2017."

There is an upside, though: every backer now has access to the game's beta, which was previously restricted to those who pledged certain, higher reward tiers. Details on how to secure that, as well as more general updates on the delay, can be read over on the Torment Kickstarter page.