Yes! I still remember back in the day where I was puzzled with these kind of questions… I relate to this 
I think there’s very good clues here already, it’s indeed the fact that if you want to replicate something you have to do it the exact same way. The rest is color grading, bloom, compositor work and such.
I’ll give you an example, everyone complains that they can’t do an Hollywood look on their renders… but that is because people don’t light the scenes like Hollywood
So the only thing you need to know is how they did it 
but without the original autor sharing how they do it it becomes a puzzle for the ones that are learning. That’s why we are sharing here all the steps we take to make COLP, in the hope that will be usefull to someone like you
Keep asking and keep learning!