(last updated: 06/01/21)Officially, the United Nations denied the existence of Darkstalkers. Unofficially, allied forces were making contingency plans against them for years. Plans were accelerated after the metropolis of Metro City was ripped from the earth and transported to the Majigen realm. Thankfully, it was returned, but the impact was heard louder than ever. The United Nations had no choice but to act.
A number of corporations had been working with the United Nations, but the one which had made the most progress was G Corporation, experimenting on artificial Darkstalkers within top secret facilities across the globe.
That is how the Gear Project began. Sometimes you have to fight the monsters you can't control with monsters you can.
Some Gears were created as fully synthetic. Many were created as cybernetically-enhanced humans. The vast majority of test subjects, however, did not survive the experiments.
One promising line of research with higher-than-average survivability created animal-human hybrids, with the best properties of both. These Gear test subjects became known as Zoanthropes. Normally they can pass as human, but their unstable genetic properties allow them to shift into a wild hybrid form, bearing strong resemblance to their animal counterparts.
Research on these Zoanthropes may very well have continued had G Corporation not been torn apart. Japan entered open warfare against the encroachments of the United Nations due to a number of occurrences. A Command Gear escaped, blasting off the top of Japan's Mount Fuji. And the lid was blown off the Gear Project entirely.
With the G Corporation's largest test facility torn apart from the inside, and its role in the black ops Gear Project unveiled, the corporation was dissolved, its components assumed by the Mishima Zaibatsu.
The matter of the test subjects, though, is a different story entirely. It's true that these Zoanthropes may pass as human -- but how will these volatile (and possibly broken) test subjects interact with a world who sees them as no different than the Darkstalkers they were created to fight?
See also: BLOODY ROAR CHALLENGES