I think this is an awesome use of Kickstarter.
Here we have a fantastic development studio who has made that gigantic leap to be a self-publisher. However, it's a thin line between success and failure, and too often compromises need to be made. Usually, money requirements mean that time deadlines are absolute, and what usually suffers is the game as it's rushed out the door.
Larian has plenty of examples of this in its own catalog. Divine Divinity was a great game, but the last part of the game was almost completely barren, with nothing to do, and quite boring. By their own admission, they ran out of time and resources to flesh this last part out. Their last major release, Divinity II, had a very lukewarm reception in the market initially due to graphics glitches, animation issues, combat issues, etc, and it was only when they released the expansion and many improvements in Dragon Knight Saga did they really have a truly fun, immersive 3D action RPG.
From the sounds of it, it sounds like Larian has met all their goals in terms of gameplay systems they want to create in D:OS, but they see how much time and money they have left, and they apparently see themselves running up against these inevitable game compromises once again before the clock runs out.
I'm thrilled that they can turn to crowd-funding to avoid such compromises, and turn to the fans to push a struggling-to-make-it independent studio over the hump to create a truly complete, compelling RPG experience that has the potential to be an instant classic on day 1.
No more waiting for the "Enhanced Edition" 1 year later for all those compromises to be wiped out. Backing this was a no-brainer for me...