The designers of IO Interactive told how they managed to develop most of the game levels using remote collection of information about places.
Jesper Hylling and Torbjørn Christensen admitted that they had not visited Italy and Japan personally, but they managed to achieve the authenticity of the depicted locations using Google street panoramas and watching videos on YouTube.
Working on the coastal town of Sapienza in Italy, the designers relied on information about Vernazza and other provincial towns of the Italian coast.
As a result, it turned out very similar to a real province by the sea, our players from Italy also recognized this. That's a damn good achievement.
IO Interactive
The developers were always looking for a balance between authenticity and fictional elements. Some details had to be abandoned for the sake of game design. For example, to reduce the thickness of medieval walls in Sapienza, so that the animation of Agent 47 throwing the victim out of the window looked more natural.
Source: PCGamesN