I really don't understand what behooves people to make a sequel to a game only to completely change its nature and genre. Fuck, at this point a level for level remake of Rune would have been more interesting.
I suspect the way how technology and tools have evolved has a lot to do with it. Not to mention the different training younger designers are receiving.
Rune was made with UE1, with a BSP-based level editor. There simply was no other choice but to create tight levels that required of lot of skill and improvisation to fake a lived in world. It was that sort of restriction that encouraged creativity. Also it was a time when interdisciplinary exchange from the animation/film industries was still very rare. Designers and artists were mostly autodictates, not Digipen or Pixar alumni.
If you look at UE4 today, it almost pushes you to design a game in a certain way. More fabricated, that is. Of course the argument then always is "Well, it's simply too expensive to create our own engine or alter commercial solutions to our likings". Perhaps, but perhaps it's also because developers have simply unlearned to face an experimentational, unknown journey.
Funnily enough, Prey (2017) is the one recent game that still feels like it was designed with that philosophy in mind.
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