I honestly feel like the “feel” of the original KI is due primarily to the hardware limitations. It left a lot of mystery that has been since removed because of better design and more detailed graphics. Everything was dark and black because they didn’t render backgrounds for the intros/outtros. Ultratech didn’t have a face, and so on.
I’d think a good comparison would be how people view the Matrix Trillogy, in a sense. In the original you were only given a glimpse of what their world was like, and an air of mystery surrounded the rest of the IP. And everyone could interpret the mystery as they wanted to. Once they pulled back that curtain, people wanted to close the curtain again and forget what they saw. But it was what it was.