Sapienza (Hitman)

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. The team placed a lot of importance on attention to detail and worked meticulously over details that most players would not perceive such as the thickness of a medieval wall in Sapienza or realism of animation work. Using 47's potential defenestration of a target as an example, Christensen emphasized that overall impression of the level's space is very important. In an interview, he noted that if a structure looks like it cannot objectively hold its own weight or if 47's animation for throwing someone out of a window somehow does not accommodate the thickness of a medieval wall, players will notice the incongruence, which will provoke a negative subliminal reaction from within themselves. Citing positive feedback from Italian players, Christensen also claimed that Sapienza's imitation of the Italian coastal town aesthetic is said to be quite authentic or convincing. The developers initially decided that the main assassination target should be an Italian mafia boss living in a large mansion, which then spawned the concept of a secret cave under the mansion where various illegal activities would be conducted by his underlings. The developers visualized 47 infiltrating the mansion as if he would a palace: it may have different floors, a basement, an attic, with main and rear entrances and an adjacent garden. The level design approach behind Sapienza, with larger environments than levels seen in 2006's Hitman: Blood Money combined with dense populations of non-player characters used in Hitman: Absolution, is considered a bold departure from IO's previous work as the company had never before created a video game level on such a scale. A distinctive feature of the level involve containing the main objectives in the mansion's premises, but the surrounding town area is filled with side content. The intricate, segmented nature of the mansion's private areas are contrasted with the surrounding Sapienza public area, a sprawling town that has no clear boundaries on where the level starts and stops. According to Elverdam, Sapienza represents the pinnacle of a "Swiss Cheese design", which utilizes the impression of a volume of content that is constructed meticulously and filled with connections. He explained that the reason Sapienza feels larger than it is in terms of square meters is that aspects of the level are like "spirals" or a "snail house", with walls wrapping around themselves and their layers interconnected with slopes and stairways. Elverdam explained that regardless of which direction the player takes, they could go in any direction but should never find themselves lost. Since the pathways are designed in such a way that players can keep a constant movement ahead all the time, they will eventually emerge at the other end of the "cheese" to either find a way to progress their current objective or another opportunity with a different solution. In this way, there are no dead ends in the level and players are not forced to backtrack if they do not wish to. Elverdam conceded the team were initially concerned about the density in small pockets of the level, but felt that it ultimately worked out as there is still ample amount of space where players can "breathe" and not feel claustrophobic. Playtesting was a crucial part of the development process and helped the team refine many aspects of the level. An important change following playtesting feedback was to the routes a target will travel and repeat, otherwise known as target loops. For example, Francesca De Santis was originally supposed to wander around the town, with detours to the church and the cave as part of her main loop. The travel times between those locations were determined to be overly long, which tested the patience of playtesters in waiting for the character to do her loop. As a result, the main loops for both assassination targets were shortened and confined to the mansion. Post-release feedback towards aspects of the Sapienza level is also something the developers take seriously, with player feedback about the termination of Caruso's virus named by Creative Director Christian Elverdam as an example. In contrast to the non-linear gameplay surrounding the main assassination targets which provides high replay value, 47's mission to destroy the virus is linear in nature as it can only be accomplished using a singular approach, which meant that players may be less enthusiastic about the mission objective in subsequent playthroughs. It was also the first time the team had built the mission around an objective that is not a human target, which Elverdam believed had given players a sentiment that it is not a gratifying task to complete. To Elverdam, the experience serve as a reminder for the team to be mindful of how there could be room for improvement for designing mission objectives for future levels. The feedback from players who said they felt forced to go down to the lab to destroy the virus every time they played the Sapienza level influenced the development of the New York DLC level from Hitman 2, which is set in a bank. The town square of Sapienza and its streets are turned into a trespassing zone for the duration of "The Icon", a creative decision which the IO team would never do otherwise because the mission's circumstances justifies the area's closure to the public. Besides presenting a set of challenges for the player, the film set also allowed the team to introduce an unusual story element in the form of a "robot invasion in Italy". Some of the story threads designed to eliminate Caruso often lean upon his relationship with his late mother, or his mental health issues. Elverdam noted that feedback from many players of Sapienza indicate that they did not necessarily feel comfortable killing Caruso because of his humanizing qualities. He states that Caruso's sincere connection to his mother and his backstory as a victim of bullying made him more interesting and complex and this moral ambiguity made the character a "deeper target" compared to what they had done before. Ultimately Elverdam believes this produced a better outcome than if his characterization had remained as a typical gangster leader. ==Level content==