Sapienza is a fictional Italian town from IO Interactive's Hitman video game franchise. First appearing in Episode 2: Sapienza of the 2016 video game Hitman, Sapienza was modeled after the Ligurian comune Vernazza as well as various towns along the Amalfi Coast in Southern Italy, and is similarly presented as a popular tourist destination like its real life counterparts. The levels of Hitman were originally released in episodic format, with Episode 2: Sapienza following Episode 1: Paris. In Episode 2, the player character Agent 47 travels to Sapienza in order to terminate a deadly biological weapon and its creator. Players may take advantage of "Opportunities", story driven threads scattered around the level that 47 can use to manipulate and kill targets. The sparsely populated town's peaceful environment and relaxed "siesta" ambience is intended to offer freedom of exploration, a deliberate choice to let players discover at their own pace weapons, secret routes and story threads that they could leverage in order to achieve the main objectives. Sapienza reappears in further levels which were subsequently introduced by Hitman developers, such as the bonus episode "The Icon", where the town center is reimagined as a movie set run by an assassination target.
Episode 2 and its Sapienza level is often cited as the standard against which subsequent Hitman episodes from the World of Assassination trilogy of Hitman video games released between 2016 and 2021 are compared to, as well as one of the best video game levels from the 2010s. The fictional town of Sapienza itself has been lauded by critics for its intricate and inventive design. The positive reception from critics and players towards Episode 2: Sapienza convinced its developers that their approach towards sandbox game design for the series as well as overall handling of the Hitman franchise were headed in the appropriate creative direction.
Development
Sapienza is the setting of Episode 2: Sapienza of 2016's Hitman, the first entry in a trilogy of video games referred to as the World of Assassination by Danish video game developer IO Interactive, the owner and developer of the Hitman video game franchise. Episode 2 was developed in parallel with Episode 1: Paris: both levels share the creative vision of being built around exclusivity and the idea that Agent 47 is able to infiltrate any location. The open, relaxed and casual daytime aesthetic of Sapienza was also a partial response to the night-time gala ambience embodied by the enclosed Paris fashion show, its bright and vibrant atmosphere contrasting the muted lighting and soft colours of its immediate predecessor. According to Torbjørn Christensen, lead level designer of the World of Assassination series, the core concept of Episode 2 began with "Coastal Town" and was the only direction they had in the beginning of development. This allowed the team much freedom in order to be creative. An Italian-themed setting was eventually chosen, which became the Sapienza level. Along with another colleague who worked as an environment artist, Christensen spent about two weeks mocking up a rough version during a summer holiday trip, where the good weather provided ample inspiration for Christensen. Christensen based Sapienza's look on towns along the Amalfi Coast, using both the colourful buildings and what he considered to be unusual topography. The team never traveled to Italy on a field trip in order to create Sapienza's in-game locales; instead, much of the research was done remotely using YouTube and Google Street View of Vernazza and other similar towns along the Coast. Of particular interest to them was the exploration of verticality in coastal towns and how streets and corridors would connect everything within such a place.