I haven't done a direct comparison against season 3 to check this, but after watching the first 3 episodes of season 1 again it feels like the direction has definitely changed over the last several years. There used to be a lot of outdoors shots of the campus, and frames where the main characters were just one face among several students in, say, Senor Chang's class. There are definitely more overt Characters now in Greendale that fits the conventional idea of expanding the setting (like the Simpsons' Springfield), but I gotta say I liked that minimizing effect where the study group was simply a weirder group of normal students, not the front of a whole posse of misfit souls. I think the last episode of season 2 kind of rubbed me the wrong way for that reason.