I do think Alice is one of the main reasons, yes.

We know that Alan tried many many times, with thousands of different stories, to leave the Dark Place. Every “loop” he got one thing different. But never enough. This is before we start playing. Between AW 1 and AW 2.

So, the main thing, in my understanding, is that on our first playthrough, Alan is tipped by Door a very important thing: that he needed Initiation to get to Return. So Initiation comes into play, another key element. With those new elements, he is able to get to the point where he picks up the pictures from the shoe box and leaves them to Saga.

Then they are able to finish Return together and Saga puts the bullet in his head, which allows him to go through the Final Draft withou losing his memory of the previous loop.

I mean, I’m as lost as you are on this 😂

EDIT: Some guy corrected me on another post. Alan already had the bullet-of-light in his head on our first playthrough. So I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about LOLOLOL