"Cave" - Liner Notes - July 26, 2000

This is another of the older tracks in Diablo II, going all the way back to summer of 1997. This was the last track to be largely assembled on the Ensoniq ASR-10 sampler, and was originally intended to be in Act IV. Because I felt it had some of the better elements of the dungeon music in Diablo, it seemed appropriate as the music for the first indoor enviroment the player would face in the game, giving a sense of familiarity after what might be the strange experience of fighting in the open air in the first few moments of play.

The creaky orchestrations of the first minute were created over a year after the middle section, which uses the heavy beats and choral textures which predominate many of our indoor/dungeon sequences. When we finally inserted musical resolutions for the quests in March 2000, it was fun to hear a track which had existed for so long in a new context, providing a glimpse of the kinds of musical interactivity which I hope we will be exploring in the future. I originally threw this one out, along with the rest of the original pass at Act IV music, in 1997, but reinserted this track in the game at the insistence of Bernie Wilkens. Edits from this tune also appeared under the title screen of the DVD which came with the Collector's Edition. There's some very strange stuff in those last twenty seconds, if you listen closely enough...

- Matt Uelmen

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