After E3 2004, Jaffe told IGN that the creative team's goal was to "make the player feel brutal, letting their inner beast free and just going nuts". He said the game's combat system would have an unparalleled degree of freedom. The team designed two systems of combat: a "macro" system, which gives players the choice between normal combat, magical attacks, or using the QTE feature to kill a foe; and a "micro" system, where players press a sequence of buttons to perform different attacks. Puzzles were implemented, including self-contained ones that incorporate up to three rooms of the game, and global puzzles that spread across four or five areas. Jaffe compared the game to the popular "Prince of Persia" series—which also incorporates puzzle and platforming elements—and said that while each puzzle in that series is a slight variation of the last, "each puzzle in "God of War" is its own beast".