Okay, Hear Me Out: No Man’s Sky Banana

No Man’s Sky was a mess of broken promises and shattered dreams when it launched. Now it’s a playground for the imagination, with players forging cities, in-game companies, and all manner of epic bases. But none of that compares to this giant banana.

Technically it has a name, “Big Banana Base,” and it was made by No Man’s Sky player and twitter user Dave-particle duality. Dave has made a lot of bases modeled after individual objects. One of them is in the shape of a rooster. Another is just a giant blue hand. There’s even a toilet made out of gold. From there Dave’s creations get even stranger

Four of my bases #NoMansSky @hellogames @NoMansSky #NoMansSkyBases pic.twitter.com/ynSvDsLdLQ

— Dave-particle duality (@DaveBastian) July 1, 2021

But none of them have hit me quite like the banana. The shape is just so perfect, the hue spot on, I’m just waiting for someone to mod Donkey Kong into the game so he can reach down and grab it.

Big Banana Base (Euclid/Normal) pic.twitter.com/Q2IMOyQGPz

— Dave-particle duality (@DaveBastian) June 28, 2021

“When people ask me how long these things take to build, my knee-jerk response is, ‘how long is a rope?’” Dave told Kotaku over Twitter DMs. The greater the detail & complexity, the longer it takes. Bottom line: I spent in the neighborhood of 12 hours on it.”

Like many No Man’s Sky creators, he took advantage of Charlie Banks’ No Man’s Sky base builder plugin for the 3D modeling program Blender. In addition to being able to precisely control objects without worrying about collision limitations, there are also basic functions like copy and paste that can help people construct more detailed bases.

“Yes, certain things are easier in Blender, but, in the end, it doesn’t fundamentally make base building easier; if anything, it complicates things,” Dave said. “Ultimately, it’s just another tool and, to use a musical metaphor, the music isn’t in the piano.”

The big banana base isn’t just for show though. Inside is a kitchen, a bathroom, and other amenities. There’s even a coffee pot, a necessary companion for anyone exploring the vast and empty cosmos by themselves. “All of these are attempts at representations of items that don’t exist in the game,” Dave said. “I’ve cobbled together some common base parts in new ways to make the desired object.”

It’s all a bit Marcel Duchamp meets Wes Anderson; found objects repurposed at art people can live in. I absolutely love it.