Star Wars Outlaws vs No Man's Sky: Similarities and differences explained

Ubisoft released Star Wars Outlaws on August 30, 2024, and tells players the story of Kay Vess, a rebellious character branded an "outlaw" who undertakes high-profile heists to make ends meet. The game also features space travel, a Speeder bike, and many other elements that make it accurate to Star Wars lore.

A game that might seem similar to Outlaws is 2016's No Man's Sky, developed by Hello Games. No Man's Sky also features space travel and similar ideas, and here we will compare some similarities and differences between the two games.

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Similarities between Star Wars Outlaws and No Man's Sky

Space exploration

Star Wars Outlaws and No Man's Sky are set in space, emphasizing the player's exploration of not just their surroundings but also the planets and other celestial bodies around them. Both games reward the player for exploring space and present unique and new rewards for traveling to places unknown.

Both games reward space exploration (Image via Hello Games)

Additionally, both feature a variety of enemies across different planets, which creates a similar experience in terms of space exploration.

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Availability

Ubisoft's Star Wars Outlaws is available across all the major home gaming platforms, namely the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X, and PC. This results in the game being very accessible for players across all platforms.

Both games are available across multiple platforms (Image via Ubisoft)

Similarly, No Man's Sky is available on all the aforementioned platforms. The game also has ports on the PS4, Xbox One, and the Nintendo Switch, and is playable on Apple devices, with a port for macOS and iPadOS.

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Difficulty settings

Outlaws offers the player multiple preset difficulty options to choose from, namely "Explorer", "Adventurer", "Outlaw", and "Scoundrel". The game also provides players a chance to customize their difficulty settings, allowing them to tweak difficulty settings exactly as per their choice.

Both games offer players the option to tweak difficulty settings (Image via Hello Games)

No Man's Sky had one difficulty mode at launch called Normal. With a recent update, however, the game now has multiple difficulty modes. The new difficulties are termed Survival, Creative, and the hardest difficulty mode, Permadeath. Just like in Outlaws, individual difficulty settings can also be changed as per the player's choice.

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Reputation system

No Man's Sky offers players an opportunity to interact with many NPCs, which can be utilized to alter the player's reputation with that particular faction. Depending on how high the player's reputation is, their weapon upgrades and trade rates may be affected positively or negatively.

Both games employ a reputation system (Image via Ubisoft)

Similarly, Star Wars Outlaws has a reputation system wherein Kay can interact with multiple factions across different moons and planets. A positive reputation can help Kay get free ammo restocks and some discounts when purchasing items from vendors.

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Differences between Star Wars Outlaws and No Man's Sky

Premise

No Man's Sky is oriented towards being a role-playing game. The player can explore, fight, and trade across galaxies and fight many enemies, all to survive in the vast, expansive universe they find themselves in.

Both games' premise is different (Image via Hello Games)

Star Wars Outlaws, on the other hand, tells the story of Kay Vess, an outlaw who has to fight to rise to the ranks. She conducts high-stakes heists along with her trusted ally Nix and infiltrates enemy lines to steal items that can help her make ends meet.

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Number of explorable planets

Star Wars Outlaws has five explorable celestial bodies: Akiva, Cantonica, Kijimi, Tattooine, and Toshara; the first four are planets, while Toshara is a moon. Each planet is different and has unique environments and characters.

No Man's Sky has a huge number of explorable planets (Image via Hello Games)

On the other hand, No Man's Sky has not six or seven, but eighteen quintillion planets. For context, a quintillion is a number with 18 zeros at the end of it! The number of planets was a major selling point when the game was first released, creating an immense number of planets for the player to stumble upon and explore.

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Genre

Though No Man's Sky does have elements of being open-world, the game is oriented and built around being a role-playing survival game. The game has players travel to unknown planets, defeat enemies, and collect resources to proceed with the game's story and character and weapon upgrades.

Both games only broadly fall into the same genre (Image via Ubisoft)

Star Wars Outlaws, on the other hand, is an open-world game that relies on the player's exploration of their surroundings. Players have a spaceship and a speeder bike, via which they can explore the game's vast world.

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Read more gaming news:

• 5 reasons to try out No Mans Sky in 2024
• How to control the Trailblazer spaceship in Star Wars Outlaws