Interview: Why Diablo 4 Sounds So Haunting - "We Wanted To Return To Darkness"

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The music for the Diablo series has always been stellar, so we dove into what makes Diablo 4's score and sound effects tick with Blizzard.

Published Jun 22, 2026, 12:00 PM EDT

Chris is a Gaming Editor at ScreenRant. He has been a professional writer since 2009, and has written for top TV, comics, movie, and video game outlets like Engadget, Polygon, Destructoid, and more. He brings with him an expertise in every game genre, no matter how niche or mainstream.

You may know him as the former Managing/Reviews Editor of Destructoid, where he published hundreds of game reviews across every genre, including MMOs, sports games, and Metroidvanias.

Find Chris on Twitter @_SRChris.

The score for the original Diablo lives rent-free in my head. Far be it from me to overuse the phrase "iconic," but those Tristram notes will live forever in the minds of millions, not just me. It set the tone not just for the first game; but the entire series as a whole, going on decades now.

Naturally, the sights and sounds of Diablo have shifted over time. Diablo 2 expanded the scope of the world, and Diablo 3 ushered in a polarizing sense of warmth. Now, Diablo 4 is going back to basics, and the sound direction reflects that strategy.

We sat down with Ted Reedy (Senior Composer at Blizzard), Dan Christian (Sound Designer at Blizzard), and Charlotte Pyle (Principal Producer of Music at Blizzard) to learn just how the team approached the sounds and music of Diablo 4, and how it was a shift from previous games.

Given the reactions to the aesthetics of Diablo 3, it's no wonder that the team changed things with Diablo 4. Reedy was happy to explain how this shift was met internally:

"Yeah, I mean, I think we wanted to return to darkness. If we're going back to the beginning of Diablo 4, we wanted to return to the roots of Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 and create an immersive environment that also did a lot of storytelling through the music. And so the world was huge, and it had a lot of huge regions in it. You know, there were five regions in total. And we wanted to have a soundscape and an atmosphere for each one of those that sort of helped define the region."

"But at the same time, it felt cohesive together as part of one score in one world. So we did a lot of research in terms of different unique instruments. We used a lot of woodwinds that, you know, were, we used a woodwind player that has a lot of unique woodwinds that were all coming from the same artist and the same musical voice, but the textures were different."

"And so they helped lend a unique language to each region. And so we did something similar with guitars and with our string instruments as well. So we really tried to define each region in that way, but again, trying to bring it all together to feel like one cohesive score."

Christian, from the sound design side, shared his take as well: "I think at the very, very beginning of doing anything is to actually get together with more upstream teams. So that means working with game designers, narrative designers, animators, and VFX, and figuring out the vision for whatever thing you're trying to make the sound for. And then from there, I think it's more like you're gathering ingredients of things you want to record, different sources, different things that you could eventually pull from that can help bring this, let's say, you're working on an enemy or something, bring it to life."

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Sound design is a fascinating craft, especially as the digital era has marched on, and sound libraries have grown even larger. Christian was happy to talk about that facet of the business and how teams can still put a unique spin on their work even with existing effects:

"So you can use a source [sound effect]. Once you design the sound effects, we have software that we use to refine the sounds further. One of the pillars of Diablo 4 audio is living audio, which means we randomize every sound effect every time, with different parameters, like the pitch, the volume. So it's slightly different every time, feels alive. And then it goes into the engine, where we test things and kind of see if it feels real or not. You know, it feels believable.

Christian further clarifies: "It's never one-to-one strip from the library, dragged into the game, job done. You always edit it, you want it to be unique and maybe an ingredient in the overall sound that you're making. So we'll layer things differently."

So what's the wildest sound effect Dan ever produced? Well, the answer might shock you.

"So what's the wildest sound effect Dan ever produced? Well, the answer might shock you: "So in the base game, there is good old Nafain, with his tree bleeding out, and a lot of that blood sound was we had this dish outside my house that my mom used to fill with water to feed the birds. So I filled it with water, then with pancake batter to thicken it up. So he's bleeding out really nice pancake stuff. And the problem is, when we put it back out, whenever it would rain, like, I couldn't get all of it out... it just kind of makes more batter. So we had to throw that dish out [laughs]."

Reedy was happy to talk about using pre-recorded clips from the music side, and how the team prefers to make original works whenever they can. "I can speak to a similar thing from the music perspective as well. I mean, just because it sort of relates. You know, we record live instruments and live musicians wherever and whenever possible. And I just feel like, you know, the human element of a real artist and a real musician provides something that nothing else can."

"So we've done that in so many different ways with all the different regions from base game through Vessel of Hatred and into Lord of Hatred. With the base game, I mentioned before, we had all those different types of woodwinds. We had a guitarist who had a wide collection of all sorts of world guitar-like instruments that had all sorts of different colors."

"We did a string quintet for Fractured Peaks. We worked with a vocal group by the name of NYX to sort of embody the witches and their chanting and their vibe. And we all combined that with a large orchestra and choir as well, when appropriate, to sort of create a unique sound for Diablo 4. Most recently, in Lord of Hatred, we had an aulos, which is an ancient Greek instrument. It's like a double pipe and a lyre, which is like a mini harp, which dates back to ancient Greece. And we also had two very unique vocalists."

Pressing about vocals in particular, Reedy had a lot to say: "Vocals have always been a part of Diablo, but we don't want to overuse them, and we want to use vocals when it makes sense. So we were actually pretty hesitant to use them in the original Diablo 4 base game. And we were like, oh, you know, there's this idea of witches and witchcraft and spirituality, and like, how do we embody that? And so we worked with the next group, which was a group of eight singers."

Pyle thankfully further explained the process, and how everything comes together: "I think what's remarkable about all of that, you know, it's hundreds of people across the world, multiple countries, time zones, you know, all that, is that players ultimately experience it as a very cohesive single score. And even more remarkable than that is, you know, it goes back 30 years now."

"You know, the way that Ted implemented the old Tristram into where we ended with Lord of Hatred, for example, like bringing all of those things together. I mean, technology has made global music production much more accessible. It obviously requires a huge amount of coordination and planning and all those good things. But it's also opened the world up to us and all of those amazing players and performers and that human element can be brought into it in a way that is really pretty special and incredible."

So what are the timelines like on all these high-profile projects? Well, it can vary, according to Reedy: "It can be quite a long production process, especially with the amount of music that we need to produce and support everything that happens in the story and in the world. I mean, we do music and support for everything that happens in gameplay. We do our cinematics, we do our boss fights, we do all the towns and worlds, we do the dungeons. Scripted sequences that are more interactive, you know, we're supporting all of this with music. And so, I think for the Diablo 4 base game score, it was over 8 hours of original music, you know, not counting all the variations that we did. And then for Vessel of Hatred, it was about four hours of music. And for Lord of Hatred, it was over four, almost four and a half hours of music."

It can be quite a long production process.

Dan highlights just how collaborative these projects can be: "A lot, yeah. We collaborate on a lot of stuff. I mean, there is one specific moment, for example, in the campaign where the Amazons have, there are these moments where there's like an incoming enemy, and they're signaling something. So, the horn they're using, just to keep everything within the theme of Skovos, is a sample Ted sent me. Because I asked Ted, 'Do you have anything that would dramatically fit Skovos?' Something the Amazons would be believable using. And Ted sent me some cool, like, horn calls that are actually... in the key of whatever region that those calls would happen in, so they could stick out in a nice way and be still, you know, just like one thing. It's not music or sound effect, it's like Diablo audio, you know, at that point."

Speaking about the original Diablo, Reedy had some great insight into the creative process: "I don't think Matt Uleman was trying to make anything iconic at the time [with the Diablo 1 score]. He was just trying to do whatever he could to support that game and the gameplay and the immersion and the storytelling. And I just remember feeling so involved in that game and the story that I wanted to be able to do something to create that as well, now for this iteration in Diablo 4. So there are things we need to do to tie the entire franchise together and make it feel like Diablo, while also creating something new for the player. And so it's always a balance of tying things back to the past and creating something new. So that was my main goal then and continues to be with each iteration."

"I have one example just to tie all that together. You mentioned when Diablo 4 was first announced, that cinematic that we had with Lilith being summoned. That was very dark. It was scary. We didn't know what to expect. And so, from where that started to where Lord of Hatred is, it's been almost seven years and what happens with Lilith's character. So I feel like there was this collective effort from the team that sort of drove where the story went. And now we ended up with something that, you know, in that scene with Lilith and Lord of Hatred, it is the original theme from By Three They Come almost seven years ago, but it's now become something heroic and almost beautiful. And so it's sort of an encapsulation of the entire Arc of Diablo 4 until this point."

We put so much time and effort into that to make it feel as tactile as possible. So when you hit them, you hear a bone crack and the blood gush.

Christian agrees: "There are so many moments I've been inspired by my own teammates, but I think at Blizzard we treat audio as a fundamental part of the player experience. You know, I'd like to think that when folks say they like the game feel of Diablo, part of that is the sound effects when you hit someone, right? We put so much time and effort into that to make it feel as tactile as possible. So when you hit them, you hear a bone crack and the blood gush."

Reedy explains how, at the end of the day, it's about passion at Blizzard, especially as it pertains to the Diablo series: "I was a big fan of Blizzard and Diablo growing up. You know, in my formative years as a kid, I was playing Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo, among a wide variety of other games. And I just remember booting up Diablo for the first time. It was probably like Windows 95. And just being drawn into the Tristram theme, you know, hearing a 12-string guitar, it was very uncommon for the time."