I lost interest in Durge halfway through act 1 because of that. I got the impression that the Origin mostly caters to the deranged serial killer fantasy and does not bother with the anxiety of your own mind turning against you. I tried to lean hard into the horror angle both after the Alfira-incident and the first butler visit, but was a bit surprised with how little the game allowed me to freak out, lean into and stew in the discomfort of the atrocity my character had just committed. I think you can't even feed that damn cloak to Gale, but I might be wrong about that. To me it seemed to be heavily player-focused, tempting you to click outrageous chat-options to satisfy the itch to find out what happens, while resisting it is more about you the player resisting temptation than about Durge wrestling with their broken mind. But I only experienced the very start of it, so that might not at all be accurate.
I think act 2 is probably the most dramatic/involved when it comes to Durge. You can get additional dialogue with Isobel concerning your urges and I think she's the very first NPC to note that you have a split personality of sorts as a resisting Durge, rather than the urge and your conscious being the exact same person essentially. You can mention something along the lines of your blood boiling and screaming for her death. She responds quite relaxed and says that despite my words, she doesn't actually feel threatened. Then mentioning after that you will not act on it, she kinda squints and says "See,
there's the real you.". It's similar to how Withers later says that Bhaal only killed Durge, but not the person you have started forming after the amnesia, leaving you with a Tav that grew beyond the broken Durge.
And if you're not about re-rolling/save-scumming, the part where the butler demands you kill your romantic interest can have massive consequences. With Isobel it's still all about choice, but with the romantic interest the dialogue choices and then the rolls are crucial to get a good outcome. So a Durge playthrough can significantly complicate an Honor Mod run during act 2 I imagine. Oh, and making the wrong choice in a conversation with the cat at Moonrise, Steelclaw, will have you remember how you treated it and it will immediately break your oath as a paladin. Apparently the act itself wasn't oath-breaking, but later remembering that you acted this way does have an impact.
Act 3 just has a lot of confirmation that your Durge definitely existed and has a dark past, but aside from being able to do a 1v1 duel with Orin, the rest of the act is mostly alternative lines with no actual special choices and consequences. It's still vastly superior to a Tav playthrough in my opinion though and I wished my first playthrough had been Durge. I don't necessarily enjoy relying on head canon too much, so having absolutely zero ties to confirm my Tav existed within Baldur's Gate before starting my playthrough made my character feel a bit disconnected, like I was more of a DM of sorts guiding the origin characters rather than the actual PC of the story.
Oh, and as an aside, Orin in her Slayer form was extremely underwhelming in the 1v1 with Durge because she doesn't even start with Unstoppable. I had the initiative, gave her a good smack and used Hold Monster, she was forced to skip her turn and second turn with everything being a critical hit in melee had her straight up die then and there. She was easier than any Bhaalist encounter leading up to her for me. So going there as Durge was very cinematic and I very much enjoyed the storytelling aspect, but it also ended up being very anti-climatic in the end.
Thank you for answering, I had wondered if the butler serves a similar purpose as Tara does when you play as Gale. While for Avatar-Gale all the companions have their normal, more or less elaborate reactions to his story-beats (if you debug them) Tara is present as your confidant whom you can discuss your quest with in more depth and who points you to the next stop of your journey (for example, she reminds Gale how highly he had always spoken of Sorcerous Sundries which otherwise is Gale's own suggestion) and I had imagined the butler would do the same for Durge. Some players seem to be quite fond of him.
That's so cool! I'll never do a playthrough as one of the origin characters myself, but it's very interesting to know the additions/changes can be this big. I imagine with Tara eating the messenger pigeons in Rivington, Gale is far less surprised to see her there, then? Or is Tara more of a projection throughout until Gale physically encounters her there?
I think the butler is probably the most enjoyable for a Durge that embraces the urges, he's more actively involved and a cheerleader of sorts, but even then he's still far less present and guiding than Tara is in that case.
