According to Cameron, "[The High Ground] was missing one of those critical elements about sequels, which is that it didn’t go enough into the unexpected." Apart from the space battle, The High Ground is a lot of what had been seen in the first film. The same locales would have been featured, ultimately concluding with the Omaticaya evacuating to the mountains seen in The Way of Water. Likewise, Cameron notes that the story was missing critical spiritual elements: "It also didn’t play enough by Avatar rules, which is to connect us to the dream world, that which has a spiritual component that we can’t even quite quantify in words."

Had The High Ground remained the story for Avatar: The Way of Water, it's very likely that it wouldn't have been received as well as The Way of Water, due to the redundancies from the first film and the missing components mentioned by Cameron. That being said, it truly is an interesting plot that does help debut the Sully Family ahead of The Way Water, while also better explaining Jake's reasoning for leaving the Forest People for the oceans, seeing as how he had already suffered multiple losses in the face of the RDA's greater numbers and advanced weaponry.