Atmosphere is tricky. AO had dark, solitary subtlety. Comedy relief was minimal, the environments were moody and grim, you had no allies. While this is a great tone to give a one-off story, it doesn't really work for a series of games. You have to develop the characters and the world. The more you add, the more you chip away at that bleak, mysterious charm of the first.
This is why as much as I like AO, it isn't perfect. Abe was a flat, bland kind of character, and was consequently difficult to relate to. Same goes for the industrialists, who were unintelligible villain archetypes devoid of personality. In AE we were introduced to a clumsier and more reluctant Abe which, given the peril he's thrust into against his will, was a realistic trait.
Glukkons were given distinct personalities and accents, which tells us so much about them without spelling it out for us. We see Sligs out of their element, pantsless and lazy, which gave them more depth as well. These things were what distanced AE's atmosphere from AO, but if they didn't make the changes, AE would have just been a longer version of AO, and I think that would have bored most gamers. AO has atmosphere, but AE has the heart.
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