Both Olympus E-PL8 and Fujifilm X-A2 have 16.0 MP resolution sensors but Olympus E-PL8's sensor is Four Thirds (17.3 x 13 mm ) and Fujifilm X-A2's sensor is APS-C (23.6 x 15.6 mm ).
Since Fujifilm X-A2's has a larger sensor area with the same resolution, this means that it also has a larger pixel area hence better light collecting capacity for a given aperture compared to Olympus E-PL8.
Below you can see the E-PL8 and X-A2 sensor size comparison.
As seen above, Fujifilm X-A2 has a 1.6x Larger sensor area than Olympus E-PL8. Larger sensors give photographer more control on the depth of field and blurry background compared to smaller sensor when shot in same focal length and aperture.