The background could be fancy pillows, it may be piles of skulls
"The background could be fancy pillows, it may be piles of skulls, it might be sand dunes, but it's actually only a flat image," Rob Gallerani clarifies. "When you drop a sword, that is a 2D sprite. It's only a flat sprite and Diablo 2 Items it sits on the top and you will see it. As soon as we have a 3D sword resting on 3D skulls and bumpy things, we can't just have it be there because it would clip all those items. So we must be certain it leaves on a pass that is on top of these things.